Joyrider – Twisted / Backroom Beats

What’s perhaps most significant with this collaboration between Merv Pepler and Will White (respectively halves of Eat Static and The Propellerheads) is that it marks the return of Twisted records. Did you think they’d finished up? Hah. Foolish: check the interview with Twisted HERE.And so what’s this album about then? Much more than the sum of its parts, it sounds like a more psychedelic and restrained Propellerheads. If you’re expecting a deep, chilled journey through psy-chillage, then you’re perhaps best looking elsewhere; this is best described as lazy, smooth funk with a cracking psychedelic edge. Drop Of A Dime opens up with an initially dubious wailing diva, before dropping into a deep, smooth funk pattern that sets your mind at ease. Joyrider confirms the quality here – it’s incredibly tight proto-funk, with of Merv’s trademark cider-driven acidlines buzzing about in the back. Tequila Sunrise and Café Spring lift us into a defiantly rare zone of quality music – it’s breathy, solid chillage, with a lazy funktified feel that harps back to a holiday you never had, with a Swedish girl who never existed, sipping drinks that were never invented in sunglasses you could never afford. Heavenly and A Little Love feature female vocals; sounding at times like a soulful Michelle Adamson, the quality remains high and it reminds me of a more late-night James Taylor Quartet. They also ably take on the 70s cop show music, Transplant My Head being something the Beastie Boys would beg to be associated with. Deviant scratchouts Lips On The Bottle, Bring Me Some Reefers, sound like a demented Coldcut, while Latino Express sounds like a Blue Note rare groove compilation from the future, with a demented jazz intricacy that’s reminiscent of latter Shpongle. The Lost Frontier sounds like the music that plays 24/7 in Merv’s static-eaten brain whether he’s asleep or awake, and finally the phuture-raga-phunk of Roaring Lion is a corker. One of those grooves that makes you close your eyes slightly, and nod approvingly at your speakers, before turning it up and starting it out again. A solid end to a remarkably solid (and solidly remarkable) album. What's key here, I'd say, is the downright universal accessabililty of this record: your mum will like it, all your mates will like it, and even my brother likes it. And he hardly likes anything. But be careful, folks, not to equate "accessible" with "shit" -- there's depth and an overall quality here that just makes it incredibly listenable. Not what we were expecting, but that’s a good thing; and the life and energy in this original album should mean it maintains rotation for some time yet.