Review: Earlier in the year, Transmission Towers delivered one of the debut albums of 2024, the vivid and kaleidoscopic Transmission One. Now Sheffield veteran Crooked Man (AKA DJ Parrot, formerly a member of bleep pioneers Sweet Exorcist and chart-bothering 90s eccentrics All Seeing I) has delivered his "crooked transmissions" - radically re-shaped revisions in his distinctive style. On this first 12" in a series, he first reworks 'Everything', turning it into a richly percussive mutant house workout piled high with mind-mangling electronic motifs, reverb-laden drums, punk-funk swagger and echoing vocal snippets. On 'My Shadow (Crooked Shade)', he re-imagines the track as a fuzzy, lo-fi and deliciously dubbed out breakbeat roller - all sweat-soaked drums, booming bass, dreamy pads and trippy vocalisations.
Ella Andall - "My Spirit Is Music" (Luke Una Machine Soul Tops Off edit) (7:16)
Slick Mission - "Time's Up" (Luke Una 5am Shabeen Proto House edit) (7:13)
Manu Dibango - "Jingo" (feat King Sunny Ade - Luke Una Dancing In Outer Space edit) (5:51)
Review: While he's not put out many re-edits of late, Luke Una has serious scalpel-job pedigree. Back in the 2000s, he and then DJ partner Justin Crawford released a series of largely disco-focused edit EPs on the hush-hush Electrik Souls series. Here he returns to the format with the first in a series of reworks focused on his popular, dusty-fingered E Soul Cultura project. He begins by teasing out and lightly toughening up a killer Caribbean cut from the 1990s, Ella Andall's 'My Spirit Is Music' - an insanely rare and hard to find number that the Sheffield-born DJ has naturally tweaked sensitively. Elsewhere, he emphasises the 'proto-house dub' feel of Slick Mission's early UK house number 'Time's Up', before going even dubbed-out and more percussive on Manu Dibango's lesser-known cover of Latin disco classic 'Jingo'.
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