Drum 'n' bass don Peshay has returned with the acutely entitled 'Fuzion'
Apart from featuring collaborations with Co-Ordinate, Flytronix, and Neil Mac, Peshay has, naturally, caught the pick 'n' mix drum 'n' bass re-birth vibe and refined its application with spotless production.
Where others have taken their cue from Samba, house and soul, Peshay has for the most part delved into house's early roots in disco, borrowing strings and funky guitar links to embellish the beats with a soft, soulful underbelly.
The result is an album that pumps with energy while simultaneously invoking the warm vibes more often associated with deep house.
Indeed many of the production techniques borrow heavily from house norms.
The much played 'U Got Me Burning' begins with big cheesy disco house filter rush, initially sounding like the build into a Phats and Small track and the aptly entitled 'It's A House Thing' uses a cuddly organ sound that would sit comfortably on a jazzy deep house track.
Some of this cross-pollination is sublime.
'Rotation', for example, whispers in on a flickering funk riff and brims with jazz promise before it's picked up by the scruff of its neck and kicked into touch by a blistering break beat frenzy.
It's a perfectly executed trick that's as delightful when it happens a second time as it was the first.
And bass lines don't get much sexier than the one that runs through the length of 'No More Tears'.
As the man says, bring it on.
by Ben Osborne