Pinch & Mumdance - Pinch B2B Mumdance

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  • There's no club brand or concept to sell Pinch B2B Mumdance as a mix CD. That's a gutsy angle to take, but it makes sense when you consider who's involved. Both Pinch and Mumdance have battered an already ill-defined sector of UK club music into uncompromising and nearly unrecognizable forms. "The Sprawl," from Mumdance's latest EP Take Time, is hardly musical at all. When it appears here, it's bolstered by a Shed remix of Pinch's "Obsession," the heavy kick drum giving it an extra leg to stand on as well a dramatic sense of propulsion. The duo's first mix CD together keeps that heart-attack feeling going for almost an hour, highlighting a purple patch between genres that's become common ground for both artists. Half the fun of Pinch B2B Mumdance comes from the tracks themselves—the swinging cinder blocks of Ziro's incredible remix of El-B, the avalanche momentum of Mumdance & Logos' "Move Your Body"—but the mixing plays a leading role as well. Most of the tunes are built on unconventional drum patterns (to put it mildly), and it can be hard to tell, or care, where transitions begin and end. It's a barrage of percussive energy with only a handful of breaks in between. By the time A Made Up Sound's remix of Asusu's "Velez" comes tumbling in, you'll have auditory whiplash. Even with those shocks, Pinch B2B Mumdance is a remarkably consistent mix, drawing up a monochrome aesthetic and sticking to it. You could probably put that part down to Pinch, whose recent forays into techno and house haven't let much light in. But maybe they don't need to. Zig-zagging through dubstep's mutant offspring, the duo have found a style all their own, one that's adventurous and resolutely dark. At a time when experimentation seems almost a given in this sector of dance music (Visionist, Moleskin, Acre et al), Pinch and Mumdance have one-upped their peers—and themselves. When the duo dropped a mix together last year, it felt like they were beaming in sounds from some distant future. Now, packaged up and even re-using some of the same tracks almost a year later, they sound very much of the moment, but not trendy. To be trendy you have to sound like others around you, and no one else is putting music together quite like this.
  • Tracklist
      01. Logos - Savanna Overlord 02. Alex Coulton - Sinners 03. Pinch - Obsession (The Possession) 04. Pinch - Obsession (The Possession) (Shed remix) 05. Mumdance - The Sprawl 06. Pinch - Down 07. El-B - Buck & Bury (Ziro remix) 08. Nurve - Wrong Number 09. Mumdance - Doom 10. Mumdance & Logos - Legion (VIPinch Mix) 11. Pinch & Mumdance - Noctis 12. Asusu - Velez (A Made Up Sound Remix 2) 13. Pinch & Mumdance - Whiplash 14. Mumdance & Logos - Bagleys (Reese Tool) 15. Pinch & Mumdance - Double Barreled Turbo Mitz 16. Mumdance & Logos - Move Your Body 17. Ipman - Ghostrunner 18. Pinch & Mumdance - Lucid Dreaming 19. Logos - No Skyline
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