- Chicken Lips is comprised of 2 breakbeat producers - Andy Meecham AKA Sir Drew who released the drumming frenzy called Screaming Skull back in '99, and Dean Meredith who was one half of Psychedeliasmith which released the retro sounding Fixy Jointy back when Big Beat was a phenomenon. Totally breaking away from their breakbeat mould, like most of the artists on the Kingsize label roster, Chicken Lips have gone down the path of the 4/4 beat and pulled off an interesting release.
The opening track of the album Electric Universe sets the mood for the album, quite chilled and laidback with a lot of electro synth lines on top. The end of the song starts to get really messy as if they felt they had nothing better to do than muck around on the keyboards.
Set 5 has a very rock like bassline, actually the whole song has a very rock feel to it with a disco patterned drum beat, but before you start thinking Kiss' "I Was Made For Loving You...", bear in mind that the synth keyboards overtake most of the track in the middle and a nice disco style breakdown gets busy in the middle - nice!
He Not In breaks all the rules about being grammatically correct and drops a wicked bassline reminiscent of an 80's electro track. Halfway through, the bassline changes and the beat starts to "break up" and then slip back into some hardcore 4/4. A highlight track of the album.
Many Members starts off with that electro feel yet again the dirty bassline kicks in with a nice buildup adding elements such as synths, percussion and an interesting sample which sounds like some native tribal women doing a chant. All of this building up to a climax before everything is just dropped and we're back to the bassline again. Love the funky electro synth at the end.
Feast Of Freaks is another song with that disco-ey drum beat feel, this time accompanied by some really nice guitar samples and a bassline so funky, you'd want to put on the afro wig and get yo groove on.
Hanging Out is a more downtempo effort and gets really heavy on the drum beat. The conga drum is great and this is one for sipping cocktails on a lazy summer afternoon. The title of the track speaks for itself.
Boil In The Bag is a reggae influenced dub track, similar to what artists like Sheriff Lindo, Jeff Dread and Atone do. Nice to just sit back, relax and pass the rizzlah 'round. The laidback tracks on the album are really well done and are standout efforts.
Wind Ya Neck In is a return to the disco stylings that are prominent in this album. Funky as always and the best part about this one (for me anyway) is that it loses the "muck around on the keyboards" session near the end that other tracks have.
You're Playing Dirty allows the bassline a bit more volume and why not... it's damn good. This song also features a lot of build ups as each element of the song is slowly added into the mix. Interesting use of the filter to create some effects on the bassline and synth washes. The carnival style break in the middle adds an interesting angle to the song for a brief moment until everyting is then taken away and we're left with the bassline again... only to build up to another climax... lovely.
Extended Play is actually a good name for the album as it is only 9 tracks, which is around the usual length for an EP and each track is longer than 5 minutes ie. extended plays. Awesome production blesses this album however it can get a little boring and puts alert heads to bed. It'd be wrong to give it a really low rating. After all the breakbeat mayhem we've seen from Kingsize in the past, it would be very interesting to see which direction this 4/4 sound will take them.