- For those unconvinced or simply confused by Planet Mu's ongoing obsession with footwork, DJ Diamond's debut album Flight Muzik should provide answers. While Muzik is no less an "authentic" footwork collection, Karlis Griffin's tracks are layered with ideas and inspirations that go beyond the mangled hip-hop of peers like Rashad, Spinn and Roc, and fits in quite well with the rest of the Planet Mu catalogue.
The bleedthrough tendency is all over the album: Not only does opener "Rep Yo Clique (Remix)" slice up its vocals into a frenetic rush, but it throws them on top of slowed-down housey chord stabs so that every strata of this music is moving at different speeds simultaneously. Armed with higher production values (or maybe just more patience) than his Chicago cohorts, Diamond's tracks vary from lush (the jazzy orchestral cut-ups of "Uh" and "I Choose You") to threateningly spare ("Wreckage," "Burn Dat Boy"). A mixture of effects and a byproduct of his sample-based technique, Griffin's percussion is uncommonly detailed and meticulous.
A compilation like Mu's Bangs & Works (on which Diamond was featured) figured footwork as part of the dialogue by way of its extremity and experimentalism, but Muzik seems to reference other musics even more directly. Try not to hear early grime in the naked horns and slicing snares in "Horns" and "Torture Rack" (where the sliding percussion feels like a slap in the face), lush "post-dubstep" in the chopped-and-screwed synth swells on "Digimon" or techno in the sped-up thump of "Wreckage." If you wanted to, I'm sure you could even find explicit dubstep affinities all over the album, as most of Griffin's herky-jerk rhythms have some sort of mutant swing embedded deep in their elaborate configurations.
Muzik's best moment is its centrepiece, the three-minute whirlwind of "Decoded" which melts a trance-tinted liquid chord progression into molten turbulence. Griffin's restless, roaming music should satisfy anyone still wondering why Mu is so into this footwork business: dicing up techno, grime, "bass" and everything else into footwork's bite-sized beats is exactly the legendary label's modus operandi, and Flight Muzik sits comfortably with some of the label's best albums of the past few years.
Tracklist 01. Rep Yo Clique (Remix)
02. Speakerz'n'Tonguez
03. Uh
04. Pop The Trunk
05. Horns
06. Vibe
07. Torture Rack
08. Decoded
09. Down Bitch
10. Wreckage
11. Digimon
12. Rep Yo Clique
13. Burn Day Boy
14. Snare Fanfare
15. Go Hard
16. I Choose You