- Lord Tusk's debut, the Natural Partnership EP, was naggingly difficult to place. Digi-dub, slow-mo house, new beat, electro—all were audible in Tusk's no-frills hardware jams, but perhaps more as a consequence of the machines he was using than out of a referential urge. Returning to Levels, Escape From Babylon is his most challenging work yet. Where Natural Partnership, for all its gummy surfaces, displayed the occasional glimmer of cosmic excess, this time around Tusk seems content to hunker at ground level.
The record's unifying quality, then, is a sense of immense weight. Each track labours over its footsteps as if half-stuck to a beer-soaked dance floor. Slow-techno number "Bowl Right On Tru" is probably the bounciest of the lot, though the synth drones that slither mournfully by don't exactly encourage kinesis. Elsewhere, "Escape From Babylon"'s sinister synths, diamond-edged percussion and sci-fi effects are almost Drexciyan, albeit played at two thirds the speed. "Sharkey's Day" and "Sharkey's Night" reshuffle the same materials—stodgy machine pulses, darkside FX, a mooching bassline—into a dread-filled diptych. Played back-to-back, that dead-eyed trudge starts to feel like it'll never end. It's hard to think of a dance floor where such music would be well received, but perhaps that's a failing of dance floors rather than one of Lord Tusk.
TracklistA1 Escape From Babylon
A2 Bowl Right On Tru
B1 Sharkey's Night
B2 Sharkey's Day