Blend
Echo Warrior
Shadow
If I keep praising Shadow the way I do, I’ll run the risk of sounding like a sampled record. However, it just can’t be helped. They dominate the American downtempo scene, and that’s all there is to it. And adding Greece’s own George Mandas (a.k.a. Blend) only makes them stronger.
This is a nice chill-out session with a whole lot of bliss in its broodings. Not all back-breaking reverberation and melancholy shadings, this is a head-nod on Prozac – a nice, even vibe. Mandas offers us some nice acoustic sounds amidst the vibrations and usual quirk-and-twerk dub effects (the pop of the acoustic bass on “Green Tea Blues” and the lively staccato drumming on “Sunset Cream”). There’s a bit of chaos in the nightmarish “Strictly Nowhere.” The straight-up downtempo funk of “World Dot Com” throws you in a futuristic, afroed, ’70s Kingston-New York blender, coasting along a smoky-eyed flute flourish that’ll leave you smiling.
This is one to definitely check out.
Shadow Records: http://www.shadowrecords.com
