Thursday, December 01, 2005

Skalpel

Skalpel are Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudlo. The Polish duo are DJ/producers who have spent the last few years digging in the crates, building a slick (and pretty much unheard) collection of samples from Polish jazz records. They then contruct their own tunes from the bits and pieces, adding beats and keys and scratches. The end result is Konfusion, their second LP for the venerable NinjaTune label. It's a smokey, crackly bunch of tunes that move from spy theme cinematics to blacksploitation riffs with a nod to hip hop and a bit of dance stuff. And lots of jazziness - '60s and '70s style abstract. It is a smokin' set of modern jazz tunes that comes with an equally smokin' bonus disc of remixes. Deep Breath is from the album disc - sci-fi keys melt into one hell of a bass line, speckled with organ, some gorgeous horn snippets, and a lovely bit of female vocals. This gets my head nodding every time. 1958 (Quantic Remix) is from disc 2. As implied in the title, it's a Quantic remix and it's aimed squarely at the dancefloor. It's a burbling bit of jazzy, leftfield house thats got great drum programming, a wicked bit of clavinet in the break and a nice spaced out feel to it.

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