- Leeds' Hackman claims UK funky and garage as inspirations, but unlike earlier waves of genre soldiers, the way he pulls from different styles feels non-hierarchical: instead of pledging allegiance to a given set of rules and expectations, he's using whatever tropes happen to suit his needs at the time, turning out tunes as lush as they are tough.
Both tracks here feel more explicitly aligned with house and techno than do his previous records, easing off the broken beats and locking onto rigid kick/hi-hat patterns. It's what happens around those that gets interesting, with glowing chords and chirps throwing light over dense thickets of shakers and syncopated percussion, and an infectious chromatic bassline (shades of Dirtybird) taking over waist-winding duties. The track's centerpiece is the looped sample of a woman singing, "I've made up my mind," narrowly filtered and increasingly folded back upon itself, like a gleaming bronze rail to guide you through the zig-zagging groove. There's a "Hyph Mngo" feel to it, but slower and more lackadaisical.
"Bam Bam" is even more relaxed, with muted keyboards and a fairly straightforward house skip; the kick drum is harder and higher than you're used to hearing in house, though, which pulls things back toward bass music's corner. The chopped and looped vocals, which sound a little like Bakja from Beanfield's "Tides," feel more naturalistic than we've become used to lately, with so much pitch shifting afoot, hugging the register with a tender grip. But they're cut up just enough to render them abstract, draped like fabric over stabbing chords and tympani-like bass riffs. Like T. Williams' "Heartbeat," it's a refreshingly versatile fusion of two worlds, accommodating to both house and bass music without sacrificing force or nuance.
Tracklist A Made Up My Mind
B Bam Bam