- Mumdance returns with two exploratory tracks that scribble all over the genre map with usual aplomb.
- Mumdance has been on a hiatus for nearly five years after some personal struggles, but his new two-track EP isn't necessarily a total reinvention. Rather, it's the start of a journey towards something new, represented by a freshly-minted label, MD Dubs, and the palpable, renewed creative fire on its first release, MD001.
"Artificial Intelligence" takes time to compose itself, but once it does, it's an otherwordly techno circus. At the two-minute mark, when it gives way to a synth line as shifty as Vamp's "Outlander," he digs up vintage hard house sounds and switches between them like turning the dial on an old fuzzy TV. Over fat-bottomed bass kicks, Mumdance turbo-charges the track with scrambling keys that could have been lifted from Experience-era Prodigy. It's bound to trigger reactions of disgusted approval.
Providing a counterweight, the mostly beatless and nocturnal "Jazz Excursion" reminds me of Tricky’s eeriest moments. Like the A-side, Mumdance is always finding new ways to move through the track, and the way he chucks in drum fills, rubber bass, gong hits and synth buzzes, bouncing them off each other to see the reaction, makes him sound like a chemist experimenting in a lab. Where "Artificial Intelligence" plunders early 90s sounds, "Jazz Excursion" is a wandering step out into a deconstruction of trip-hop, weightless grime and, of course, jazz. Eventually, he returns back to those synth washes and lets them go into the ether.
Tracklist01. Artificial Intelligence
02. Jazz Excursion