Sickboy – Owley Girl 12″ (JUNK02)
Second release for Aphasic’s JUNK label, and it’s a serious go-er. The title track is the expected mentalist twisted shit – fucked up beats, rolls and noises which almost escape into a gay S.A.W. disco stomp. Nice! One of those great 3 in the morning tunes which you thought would be all conventional but everything is toooo fucked…
“Junkcats & Alleyrats” brings a distinctive hip hop flavour to the proceedings – continuing the trend set by the first JUNK release for including some (relatively!) downtempo biz. A cartload of great vocal samples pillaged off tunes you never heard: “money is da object” says a female MC, and is that Master P somewhere in the mix as well?
“Trio Inferno” is sorta napalm death gabba with a bunch of wannabe MCs working on the waltzers at the fairground: “bring it back to the TOP”. Messy beats… in a good way. You also get about two seconds of “Real Rock” in the middle and are similarly tortured by an insane mash up of “Hey Ya” which is sadistically kept for the last few bars only. Dr Remix to the operating theatre!!!
“Owley Bass” is severe abstract beats, with some sort of alien funk lurking in its heating ducts. Zero gravity space-chase theme music.
Aphasic – We Are Junk 12″ (JUNK03)
It’s Jason’s label and he’ll release his own goddamn records if he wants to, right?
“Junkfunk” brings the ravemental doof doof doof from the outset, with added rumbling sub bass. Great breakbeat science (as in Mad Scientist going off on one rather than painstakingly chopping up breaks over a 10 year period or whatever it was Rupert Photek was supposed to have done. Was he actually called Rupert? I may have made that up.) Also some nice arcade type noises.
“Junkrock” is really weird beats and noise more like the Ambush “Voicecrack Remixes” than anything else. It’s all the better for it though – the synthy bass seems to be about quarter speed in places. Sheets of static & noise rain down on vicious breakbeats.
“True Shots” is off kilter space invader shit. A 50s b-movie soundtrack made by hyperactive kids. It makes marginally more sense at 33.
“Several Directions” is the winner here. A nice “builder” of a track (as opposed to a nice builder – who maybe whistles a merry tune whilst doing your grouting). A familiar bassline (which actually sounds like it may originate from a bass guitar, shock horror!), minimal beats and noises on top. It manages to be beautiful and stupid at the same time – that bass slowly drives the track on, reassuring you that the rest of the insanity will do you no harm. Arguably the best thing Aphasic has done to date.