It's interesting that Mono211 was originally meant to be the 'main label' that us here at Monotonik released music on. This was mainly because we were known in our early .MOD days for being eclectic, unclassifiable genre jumpers, and we wanted to carry that tradition on. But in the end, we found our love of idm+videogamebleep action on Monotonik took front stage (and rightly so!) But most of all, we found that there's just not that many artists making good but 'unclassifiable' music that really _works_.

However, in Braces Tower, the London-based artist who submitted an EP of tracks to us earlier this year, we found exactly what we were looking for - the style-straddling, the inspiration, and most of all, the panache.

If his music can be compared to anything, it's the sample-stitching of the 'new chill out' UK massif such as Bent, Lemon Jelly, Mr.Scruff, and so on. [In fact, Braces Tower's Destiny's Child vs. The Specials cut-up is already pretty well-known in bootleg circles, showing the kind of cheeky angles he enjoys mining.]

But trying to describe music always brings in dirty or overmined words, and it's the music that stands on its own. In fact, it towers, with the lead-off track "Ten Fingers" weaving vocal samples and loops hypnotically all of the place, and "Scissorman" skanking up the place something tragic with its frantic brass hits and flamenco-ish trumpet. And when the final tracks is "King Of Rock", with feelgood hooks strewn all over the place... well, words fail us.

So yep, we know this isn't exactly the kind of music we _normally_ release, which is why it's on our sublabel, Mono211. And Mono211 will continue to be the sublabel we use to break things up with genre-confusing, breaks-borrowing pieces of genius that otherwise wouldn't make it out there. And this EP is one of those. It's actually probably far too classy for us. But psshh, don't tell anyone.

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews