GET SOME UK UK MUSIC, ART AND CULTURE

Finally this album is out…. someone I went to university with and DJ’ed alongside has his debut album drop on Alpha Pup. Exhilarating hip-hop instrumentals and hyperactive odd-tronica from one of the UK’s most promising beat-crafters. Already lauded by Gaslamp Killer, Pitchfork and Mary Anne Hobbs (who singled him out as her ‘Favourite Unsigned Artist of 2010′), Young Montana has now found a home with Alpha Pup. Most artists take a few years in the spotlight to develop, but this wee fella – apparently only 20 years old – feels already like the finished article, his debut full-length a dazzlingly ambitious and fully-realized affair.

Hailing from sunny Coventry, his abundant musicality and kinetically edited style brings to mind vintage Prefuse 73, splicing and dicing fragments of steamy soul, techno, grime, folk and On The Corner-style freak jazz into lurching, luminescent beat patterns that make even Mike Slott’s junkyard-falling-off-a-cliff beat style sound static. It’s tough to pick favourites, but the way the looped lovers’ vocals and breezy horns of ‘Bad.day’ dissolve dramatically into a sea of undulating, echo-plexed techno-dub is one of the album’s most arresting moments. ‘Mynnd’ is the sound of YM’s imagination in overdrive, climaxing in a heads-down groove fashioned out of sawing, distorted bass and twitchy drum edits that nudge us into almost avant-garage territory. ‘Hot Heathrr’ shows just what can be achieved with genuine talent and some decent cracked software these days, with what feels like a million different melodious samples and drum clusters battling for supremacy.

Yes, there are moments where you wish he’d stop fiddling and just let the groove do the talking, but it’s churlish to complain; that really ain’t the game he’s playing. And while there’s a hell of a lot going in every track, it’s arranged and spliced with great discipline; even the busiest compositions are coherent and balanced and that’s exactly what makes it such a mind-boggling trip to listen to. Honestly, if this was Hudson Mohawke’s new album then everyone at the planet would be hailing it as a masterpiece; don’t let the fact that Young Montana is less well-known obscure the magnitude of his achievement.

That’s right. We had the iPod DJ. That was pretty whack, unless you simply saw yourself as a selector with absolutely no use for transitions or creative touches. Now, there are these guys, the iPad DJs. There are a few examples online, but this seems to be the one that has caught the most traction to date. She claims to be the worlds first. I’m not sure exactly how you might qualify that, but I have no grounds to contend it (other than that she has zero skill) so I won’t. Anyway, regardless of the poorly executed demo, you can kinda see what she is getting at…. there is a lot of creativity to be had with these things.

Whilst on the iPad tip, Gaslamp Killer was spotted going ape shit on stage with an iPad in hand at the Worldwide Festival earlier this month. He was doing all sorts of remote triggering, looping and effects while Gonjasufi tried to drown out the crowds booing with his mumbled noodlings. Seemed more like product placement than genuine creative showcasing. Oh well. You can see him doing something similar but far more subdued here.

One last thing, and please be vocal if you disagree, but I can kind of see how the iDaft format of delivering music as a grid set of pre-defined playable parts and loops could lend itself to many more DJ orientated releases of the future, particularly if the touch screen interface becomes king of the decks. If every track were an app… maybe that’s another article of it’s own.