FRUMMPPP // Gerry Read & Kevin McPhee

FRUMMPPP

Label: Fourth Wave
Format: 12”/Digital
Release Date: 04/05/15

I’ve spent far too much time combing over Kevin McPhee’s 2012 Boiler Room mix trying to ID releases. Just about every track in the set was both unreleased and unidentified at the time of broadcast, from Bobby Champs’ swaggering ‘Krenshaw’, Boddika’s piston-firing ‘Steam’ and McPhee’s own dizzying WNCL release ‘In Circles’. Whilst these have all been slowly siphoned off over the years, there are still gems yet to see the light of day three years later.

One such gem to be unveiled recently is ‘FRUMMPPP’, a collaborative release from McPhee and camera-dodging Delsin signee Gerry Read. Anyone familiar with their first meeting on ‘Demolition Man’ will be aware of the mayhem their combined efforts can bring, retaining a healthy amount of self-aware humour amongst the bravado.

‘FRUMMPPP’ does share some similarities to their first offering in its jagged lo-fi thrills, but otherwise deviates quite a bit from ‘Demolition Man’. Staggering, fax-tone glitches and thickset, stomping 4/4 kicks mesh together, thundering brazenly from the commencement. There is something vaguely comic in the way the track swaggers forward cocky and unabashed, grinding synth-tones struggling to keep up with the incessant boom of low-end.

On the flipside the pair have turned in a recast of the original, vaguely familiar of Gerry Read’s previous Fourth Wave offering ‘Legs’ with it’s mangled sampling and rough-edged, skittering house rhythms. Bumping, chopped-and-screwed house drums work into a chaotic frenzy alongside clipped vocals and misfiring computations.

Read and McPhee are two artists who share much in common in their sonic outlook, and although only making up their second release together, ‘FRUMMPPP’ is just as joyously noisy and quirky an affair as ever. Let’s hope their next meeting won’t be too far off.

  • Published
  • May 14, 2015
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