Francesco de Bellis and Mario Pierro's (of Mat 101) new project, Jolly Music, takes up the reigns where Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx left off. Laying down deep funky grooves, feeding in guitar twists, overlaying synth lines and dropping in incidental music hall chanson, they chop up the vinyl, tinker with the rhythm and fuck up the beats.
As they say: "If you have nice turntables you can use old records as instruments to express your feeling." Except they don't use them so much as instruments as power toys. Their sound is Bob the Builder tearing down the house. Serious deconstruction done with a consistent playful sense of aural reconstruction.
Imagine two geezers with record collections that range from Edith Piaf and Django Rhinehart through T-Rex, MSFB and George Clinton to Afrika Bambaataa, Public Enemy and onto Daft Punk and Jazzanova. Then lock them in a room with two turntables each and an MC in the corner barking rewind at every tune. Chuck in a few effects units, sampler and assorted instruments and let the twisted anarcho-funk come forward.
The duo's production is assured enough to for them to dispense with structure and play around without being pretentious.
Dub b-lines slide into hip hop breaks, disco and house patterns that skip with subtle ingenuity, while a soft soundscape slides between your ear drums. There are cool sounds but it is by no means lounge material, more like solid future funk that doesn't need to don a space age cape to make its point.
Jolly, jolly good. No, really.
by Ben Osborne