- Sam Shepherd and Alexander Nut's Eglo records are on a serious roll at the moment. Shepherd's fantastically wonky jazz-house tracks as Floating Points may be flying off the shelves and warranting multiple represses, but the rest of their Eglo family—FunkinEven and vocalists Fatima and Shuanise—are also firing on full cylinders. The two ladies of the crew have done their best to reclaim R&B and soulful pop from the major labels with their two 2010 12-inches, while FunkinEven's Kleer threw together boogie, hip-hop, electro and Todd Edwards-esque cut-ups in an accomplished and irresistible fashion.
It's not difficult to guess which genre he's tried to amalgamate into his retrofuturist repertoire by looking at the title of the A-side cut of She's Acid. But this isn't just any old acid house pastiche. Loping along at 102 BPM, its fusion of hip-hop and house comes across a bit like a mix between Dam Funk and Adonis, with the minimalist beats giving the heavy emulated TB-303 (which does actually sound pretty faithful) and surging cosmic synths plenty of space to do their thing. "Must Move" is another cut for DJs who want to cruise along at a slow beat but still rock the club in a totally different way. It's one of those tracks which constantly builds, with jagged arpeggios and ascending sirens blaring out over its stomping mechanical beat. Its slightly cheesy vocodered vocal may polarise opinion with some jocks, but there's no question about the quality of the production. With a forthcoming release scheduled on Hyperdub, it looks as if FunkinEven is going to be an artist to keep an eye on.
Tracklist A She's Acid
B Must Move