Recorded live as a duet between turntables and keyboards (with editing and overdubbing bass added later), the main track here is a slow, dramatic piece, with the flip side conjuring the best moments of electronic dub.
While artists who specialize in the use of a turntable as an instrument are a dime a dozen, no one else really uses the device as creatively or as intensely as Jeck.Truly "playing" it, rather than just using it as a way to sample or scratch records, he coaxes sound out of the players that bear little or no resemblance to the source material."London Tenderberry" is a piece of slow drama that has no overt "record" sounds in it:shimmering synth pads, reverberated bangs and crashes, and a gurgling bass pulse meet to create a flowing river of opaque sound.The flip side, "Tenderberries Version" is not an ironic title at all, cutting the mix from the previous side up into throbbing bass and electronic synth pulses, leading to a complex variety of tone and rhythm, but with an intense dub sensibility that stands with the best of the genre.
Within the confines of a 7-inch record, I must admit that this is a case where less isn’t more.Sometimes a project or specific work is best kept within a sub-12 minute space, where it is able to make its statement without becoming stagnant or repetitive, but that's not this record.The complex nuances of the A side and the electro-like bass heavy flip just left me wanting more.Which is, I assume, the best compliment I could give.
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