ToyoTomi

Never one to stand stylistically still for more than the length of a studio session, the only real thread tying Brian ‘Danger Mouse’ Burton’s career together is his unending striving to reach the outer limits of contemporary pop. Offering the world game-changing bootleg hip hop, the best Gorillaz album yet and effortless hitmakers Gnarls Barkley weren’t his only outlets, though. The Los Angeles super-producer was concurrently hard at work with this five-year labour of love, alongside Italian composer Daniele Luppi, Burton’s arranger on several past projects.

Entitled Rome after the album’s city of inception, it could equally be named Spaghetti Western Soundtracks Updated, such is the influence of those evocative sounds. Neither of the duo have attempted to hide such links, either: not only did they decamp to studios formerly used by Ennio Morricone, but Luppi pulled off something of a coup in reuniting the original players from Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Far from merely retreading the past, mercifully, the fiercely analogue results take on a sophisticated dimension of their own.

Two recurring guest vocalists characterise Rome, with yin and yang effect. Whatever you make of the man, Jack White has already proved himself a versatile performer way beyond The White Stripes’ four-legged blues shuffle. And he adds another string to that particular bow with several earnestly fragile lead vocals never better than on the delicate The Rose With the Broken Neck.

MOR popstress Norah Jones is a less-expected inclusion, despite previously marking her card as a part-time left-leaner by lending moderately sultry tones to work by Mike Patton. There is no such unlikely experimentalist form here, sadly. Where White adds a ghostly otherworldliness perfectly suiting the atmosphere, Jones’s contributions are relatively nondescript. This is particularly clear on Black, the irony not lost that the track is the polar opposite of her male co-lead in every regard. Take a finger to your fast-forward button, however, and without Jones’ handful of mediocre performances, Rome breezes past with all the tinkling, indefinable intent of a lost Michel Gondry film score.

Label: Kraken Recordings Catalog#: KRKN 001 Format: Vinyl, 12”, 45 RPM
Country: Denmark Released: 16 Apr 2007  Genre: Electronic Style: Dubstep

Label: Punch Drunk Catalog#: drunk11 Format: Vinyl, 12”, 45 RPM
Country:UK Released: 23 Feb 2009  Genre: Electronic Style: Dubstep

Label: Dubstar Souljah Catalog#: DS001 Format: Vinyl, 12”
Country: UK Released: Jul 2009  Genre: Electronic Style: Dubstep

In case you didn’t know, Horsepower Productions are one of the foundational dubstep forefathers alongside El-B and Zed Bias, releasing the first bits of wax on Tempa records with the terrific ‘Gorgon Sound’ and generally laying the groundwork for a generation of stepping dubheads. ‘Damn It’ is the crew’s shocking return to form for 2009, some 9 years after they first shaped the scene into being, and once again holding presedence ovber much else the scene has to offer today. made for big soundsystem play, this is a pure dance heater with masses of soundbwoy samples crammed into a big rolling halfstep number with enough swing and attitude to consolidate all sides of the scene into one killer track. ‘Kingstep’ on the flip will immediately draw comparisons to the sound of Dusk & Blackdown’s recent ‘Margins Music’ LP with Mid-eastern and Sub-Continental strings and vocal scales, but we should really state that the influences originally came the other way around, with Horsepower being a major influence on Martin Clarke’s sound. It’s a sweltering jam of samples, hard-snapping beats and wildly dubbed FX that anyone remotely into Dusk & Blackdown, Skream, Benga, Hatcha, Kode 9 or any of the original dubstep heroes should check without fail. Large!

It’s always fascinating how the emotional context to a particular sound can change based on what else happens to be going on in the frame. In the case of “Ungirthed”, what seems to be the first track from a new project started by a member of spazzy electro-pop outfit Gobble Gobble, the transformed sound in question is the sort of pitched-down post-Burial ghost voices that in the past few years of music have often come to represent loss, loneliness, and maybe even death. (David Bevan wrote a feature about it here late last year.) But as heard here, next to a crazily addictive indie pop melody from singer Megan James, the ghosts sound liberated from purgatory and ready to join the party. The synths are warped and churning forward with an oblong gait as tinny electro drums tap out the beat, but it’s James’ voice at the center of this thing that keeps the ear coming back. In a time when so many lead vocals are buried and distant and dialed in from a memory, she sounds wonderfully present and clear and full of energy. “Ears ringing/ Teeth clicking/ Ears ringing/ Teeth clicking” goes the nifty little refrain, another affectionate tug from a song that seems to pull you closer with every bar.