Fans of early Nineties jazz house and the soulful production simplicity of tracks such as 'My Mute Horn' will grab the point as soon as the first bars of Westpark Unit's 'Still' wash through the speaker stack.
A subtle but highly evocative house track, it swells around a minimal horn and carefully placed waves of deep keyboards.
It's emotive content is indicative of what's to follow, although it acts as a poor showcase for the duo's more interesting rhythms which range from dancehall, hip hop and Latin influences, as well as jazz and house.
Herb LF and Ingo Sanger, both of whom have established separate careers as part of the Gush Collective and Nordtadt Union (Herb) and running the Farside label (Ingo), began recording as Westpark two years ago.
Their first single, the totally embracing 'Forever' backed by the aforementioned 'Still', served to garner them immediate respect, even though this merely hinted at things that were to come.
For example 'Selected Related', the second track into the set, throws in heavy dancehall influences married to jazz and Latin inferences.
Victor Davies made one of his first vocal appearance's through Ingo's 'House Not House' compilation, so it has symetary that his honeyed voice graces this album on the jointly penned 'Fade Away' - a track that has more than a passing resemblance to a Zed Bias production.
Bert Bacharach's 'Look Of Love' is given abstract hip hop, blunted beats treatment, while, by way of contrast, 'Hot Box' skips on properly cut-up broken beats.
'Look Of Love' is also given a dramatically different re-mix, with Darren Lee taking over from Beatie Warren's orginal vocals, while persistent listeners will be rewarded by a soulful hidden remix of 'Fade Away' at the end of the album.
WU's debut long player has more than enough emotional impact, well honed-influences and intellectual acumen to be re-selected, re-selected and re-selected again.
by Ben Osborne