POLYFOLK DANCE
(WARP)
Much of the talk that surrounds LuckyMe – the Glasgow art and music collective that includes Hudson Mohawke, Rustie, Mike Slott, Dom Sum and more – is about their dept to J Dilla. Before the W-word was conceived, half the descriptions of this lot featured ‘post-Dilla’, ‘Dilla’s legacy’, so on and so forth.
Hudson Mohawke is perhaps the closest member of the crew to Dilla; he plays the drums (though I don’t know if he samples them live like Dilla did – which is where his off-kilter patterns came from), and like Dilla, some of his tracks are hip-hop in tempo but not aesthetic. Donuts was full of soul tracks with a pulse, and Hud Mo’s recent ‘Star Crackout’ single did something similar – only with crackling, distorted opera (?) But crucially, and this is the point a lot of people miss with Dilla – he’s as indebted to big, mainstream bitches ’n’ blunts hip-hop, as he is to ‘creative’ underground artists.
Listen to the vocal version of Dilla’s Ruff Draft; his attitude’s about as far removed from the early 00s branch of undie hip-hop as you can get. Likewise Hud Mo, by his own admission, “prefers the mainstream stuff… there’s a lot of it that pushes forward more than the so-called underground.” And thus you have Polyfolk Dance, his debut EP for Warp that unites space-age beat patterns with widescreen, Heatseekers-style production gloss. Sometimes the complex programming distracts from that sense of glitz, but on standout tracks ‘Overnight’ and ‘Polkadot Blues’ Polyfolk Dance shatters the idea that grandiose production sheen and warped, confrontational beat patterns are mutually exclusive.
It might not blow you away at first, but it’s a grower – and have some perspective; it’s a six-track instrumental EP from a young producer, and his first on a big label. Polyfolk’s a quality release that sits nicely alongside the high points of Hud Mo’s catalogue so far – Oops on Wireblock, the Heralds of Change Secrets and Puzzles EPs, and his recent seven inch on All City – each of which provide a different type of insight into one of the most exciting musicians around.
Rating: 7.5 / Tom Lea