- Rich Prick Poor Dick is touted as NYC producer FaltyDL's return to the "dance floor music that made his name" after the "experimental excursions" of In The Wild, his Ninja Tune album from last year. Indeed, the two tracks on this 12-inch are more club-friendly than the eclectic, borderline spastic spread of ideas on that LP, but this is still FaltyDL we're dealing with, so don't expect anything straightforward. Both sides of the record blend house and techno formats with manic sound design and freeform arrangements—by dance music standards, anyway. It all works exceedingly well, and might be the perfect distillation of FaltyDL's two dominant interests: rhythmic immediacy and uninhibited sonic possibilities.
B-side "Bookaloo" is about as clear-cut as it gets here, though that's not saying much. It's near-constant loop of hand percussion keeps a strong linear current active, and only dips out long enough to give the spotlight to, say, a tweaked jungle break or accentuate an incoming drop of fidgety synth squiggles, booming subs and God knows what all else. There's a hell of a lot going on in "Bookaloo" at any given moment, almost to the point of sensory overload; that FaltyDL can keep it cohesive and rhythmically appealing is remarkable.
The title track takes more liberties with structure and mood, which makes it less likely to appear in DJ mixes. But that doesn't mean "Rich Prick Poor Dick" is any less effective or arresting with its gnarled technoisms—it'll just take a special kind of curator to find the right place for this blown-out, quasi-trance powerhouse.
TracklistA1 Rich Prick Poor Dick
B2 Bookaloo