- It seems like every other week brings a debut from a new artist on Optimo Music or its clubbier sister label, Optimo Trax. It can be difficult to keep up, but the releases tend to be of unfailingly high quality, with highlights spanning Golden Teacher's EPs on Optimo Music to L/F/D/M's acid freak-outs on Optimo Trax. Releases on both labels fit within a loosely defined aesthetic, so Shift Work's debut for Optimo Music makes total sense: idiosyncratic but primed for club use.
Scaled To Fit comprises four tracks and four interludes. The interludes are eccentric pieces that dot the EP with sections of fried electronics, snatches of dialogue and ambient bleeping passages, giving things a magpie's-nest feel. The four full tracks, all informed by techno, funk and disco, are characterised by a similarly loose, spontaneous energy. A squishy bassline, finely textured rhythms and light washes of vocal are the order of the day on the strutting "Patience." "Associations" is sleazier, all hard-hitting drums, stuttering basslines and breathy vocals. "Shift Work"'s propulsive rhythm spills forward, the track building into a heated, suffocating mesh of synths and drums that re-establishes itself with double the strength. Less tooled for the dance floor, "[Less] Merchandise" is the most hypnotic track, with lush chords and an echoing voiceover countered by a quivering bassline and muffled shouts, all coalescing into a paranoid whole before dissolving ambiguously.
TracklistA1 Patience (JD Twitch Edit)
A2 Associations
B1 Scaled To Fit
B2 [Less] Merchandise