Available on: Nod Navigators EP

It’s increasingly a challenge to document the international freeform beat-making movement that has evolved at a dizzying pace over the last few years. Whilst the more successful exponents of the capital cities of this sound – LA, Glasgow, Amsterdam, London – continue to simmer on the web-pages of specialist web journals and hipster rags, there are still many artists whose contributions are not understood and are underappreciated. One such artist is Spain’s Diego Coba, a.k.a. Mweslee, whose lineage and relationship with this scene pre-dates Beat Dimensions 1, the comp on which he first made global waves with the oddball boomclap of ‘Un J*der Suave’.

Mweslee himself is a soft spoken, gentle soul, almost the polar opposite of his current compositions which are extravagant, sprawling and colourful. He describes himself on twitter as “Terry Riley meets Teddy Riley”, a fitting way to bottle this peculiar sound in a binary comparison. Many fans tend to draw parallels with the work of Dimlite, another important innovator on the Dadaist hip hop circuit – in that they share a love for the uneasy, the dissonant and peculiar, and are both fans of Python-esque wit and musical abstraction taken to extremes. But although they may be similarly culturally estranged from their peers, Mweslee’s heart lies more in the dancefloor, and the deep impact, rattle and trashy technicolour resonance of Southern rap.

On his latest EP, Eurocarne for Kindred Spirits sister label Nod Navigators, Mweslee is heading in a direction that seems somewhat inspired by the modern soul and boogie, euro-pop and jazz-rock of the 1980s – but not in the revivalist sense of Dam Funk, People’s Potential Unlimited records, or Nite Jewel. Instead the clinking Dx7 Rhodes changes and squelching Juno basslines of ‘Nova Olimpia’ are subverted into a new context, a kind of backwards, upside down humour-funk, as though designed in a mirror image like Gaudi’s cathedral. It’s arresting stuff, definitely not background music, nor is it plagued with the familiar “wonky” Microkorg signifiers and post-Dilla platitudes heard so often on the MySpaces of the genre’s imitators. This is what Vangelis would make if you played him some dope mixes off the LuckyMe website – particularly with regards the lush, yet unsettling ambient drones of ‘Variations Pour CX Pallas’.

The man definitely loves his wordplay, right down to his moniker – “Mweslee” is an abstraction of the word “Muesli”, and keeping with the food theme, Eurocarne means, well, European meaty goodness. Pause. The title track ‘Eurocarne’ is compelling, odd, sometimes very stomach turning, sometimes utterly enriching, a bit like a kebab – satisfying when you’re starving for a certain taste, but could make you chunder in the wrong circumstances. I think this is exactly what Mweslee intends, and having seen his live shows twice – once at Sonar in 2008, and now recently at CD-R in London in 2010 – the man loves to overwhelm the speakers with a storm of analog sine-waves, or in the case of Sonar, a frenetic drum solo played on 80s drum triggers, as though he were Phil Collins feeling something in the air tonight.

And yet there is still somehow, a hip-hop, or perhaps more likely, crunk core to it all. You could picture Lil’ Jon demonstrating his brand new crunk-juicing machine on QVC to this; at times it sounds like a dystopian take on ‘80s commercial jingles. And the ghost of spiritual free-jazz seems to oddly haunt the EP’s proceedings as well – it comes as no surprise that Mwes runs a label called Arkestra Discos, named after the mighty avante-gardist Sun Ra’s band.

Rather like Sun Ra’s Saturnian masterpieces, it’s clear that this intergalactic protein rich meal is strictly for those with an acquired taste and a mature palette – but I have no doubt that the converted I’m preaching to will definitely savour the flavour. To disciples, this is a dish worthy of the restaurant at the end of the universe, best served with an entrée of Erik Satie and some Isao Tomita for dessert. Heston Blumenthal wishes he had swagger like this.

Mr. Beatnick