By Jack
IDM is never going to have its Ed Sullivan moment. Bonobo is never going to walk on stage to the shrieks of fifty thousand teenage girls, the sounds of teen hysteria drowning out his tasteful jazz cut-ups. I don’t mind. Music like this is a luxury, not a commodity. It isn’t something you want all the time, but when you do, there’s nothing quite like it.
Shigeto’s ‘Detroit Part II’ is a perfect example of this downtempo style. Calming, yet subversive and spooky, this track is special. ‘Detroit’ stays with you. Not like an ear-worm, but like a haze, like a puff of bong-smoke blown into your face, and leaving you giddy for a while afterwards.
This is a sound that once upon a time would have been called trip-hop, though that parlance has since fallen off. It’s an evocative mish-mash of new and old, analogue and digital. A sharp, urgent electronic beat is minimised by a curtain of hazy synth affects, and the scratchy squeal of a saxophone. A vocal snippet patters in and out of the mix. A jazz track, corrupted and distorted into an entirely new context.
Shigeto provides the cerebral chill once associated with acts like DJ Shadow and the Mo’ Wax label. We’ll look forward to hearing The New Monday, but till then, this is a hell of an Endtroduction.
