Although Fluid Ounce have been generally lumped in with the broken beat school, their sound is in fact more funk influenced than the association implies.
Zero DB, aka Chris Vogado and Neil Combstock the label's main artists and players, certainly reside within the broken beat idiom, but as tracks such as their powerful re-working of Grupo Batuque's 'E Ruim' demonstrate, their productions are aimed squarely at winning the dancefloor - and very successful at it they are to.
Rather than an artist album, 'Reconstruction' is an album of remix projects that the duo have worked on.
Zero DB are about driving funky bass lines and playful eccentricity and their remix of Sun Ra's 'Satellites Are Spinning' immediately sets the standard - not least when the saxophone bursts from what sounds deceptively like the end of the song.
Peter Kruder's Peace Orchestra gets a suitably jazzy re-scoring for 'Henry', with beats and effects being rolled back and forth beneath the mute horn and saxophone.
Truby Trio's 'Galicia' gets a sure fire funky dancefloor make-over, while stable mates John Kong and Moonstar provide the raw material's for bass end broken beat experimentalism and one of the stand tracks on the album - 'Future Vision'. If it's worth buying an album for one song then this could be it.
But this is far from a one-track album and Zero DB's re-working of Original Soulboy's 'Touch The Sun' veers off into Domu territory while their version of Suba's 'Samba Do Gringo' equally expertly tinkers with Latin house arrangements.
Interfearance's 'Xtradition' continues the beat attack while Acme's 'Hangovers' ends the album on a production high.
Nine stand-out tracks on an album of as many titles.
by Ben Osborne