45 Dip - former Marden Hill producers Mark Daniels and Chris Bemand - portray themselves these days as 24 hour party people who spend their daily lives drinking vodka with copies of gent's magazines and a bucketload of LSD, not knowing when they'll be off to bed, nor indeed where they'll even wake up. Ker-ray-zee!
Whether or not this well worn clichéof English hedonism is a reality (let's not forget the pair are no spring chickens) is neither here or there, since the music on this compilation is mostly bibulous, conjuring up a Bacchanalian soundtrack to those days and nights spent IN the house but OUT of your head.
Not that easy to pull off a mix that sounds like it's drug-drenched, booze-addled and nicotine-stained, but the duo manage it, all with the added bonus of some dope hip hop beatwork underneath.
The range is deceptively broad. Choosing well from the current plethora of downtempo sounds out there (including a few of their own, such as opening track 'Organ' and 'Green Tomatoes'), the duo weave, stagger and hiccough between the gently bubbling bossa of Bebel Gilberto's 'Summer Samba', the heartfelt soundtrack energy of Easy Access Orchestra's 'Gilder Girl', Akasha's quirky 'Interzone', the introspective 'Crazy' by Yasmin Tamara, the dramatic and exotic 'Epoca' by Gotan Project, and Drystar's eerie, crepuscular 'Slipinslide'.
On CD two we get a similarly infectious blend of blur. Los Amigos Invisible's indulgent 'Arepa 3000', Cesari Evora's euphoric house chugger 'Carnaval De Sao Vicente', the suave swing of Suede Shades 'These Boots', the dense trippiness of morgan's 'Soul Searching' and the fresh, insouciance of Crackpot's 'Tippy Tippy Toe' all trip along merrily to help create the kind of compilation that you don't have to be potty to buy. But it helps.
