Satin Panthers
4/5
Few recent producers have inspired as slavish a cult-following as Mohawke. Perhaps this is down to the mystique provided by his protesting work ethic – this being his first release in the two years since his debut album. Despite the largely sedentary nature of music making, HudMo is blaming his lack of recent output on a poorly foot. Despite its brevity, Satin Panthers offers plenty to keep the HudMo-starved hipster contingent happy, with lashings of the attention to detail and grinding contrast between the pretty and the profane that characterises his style.
Over the years, Mohawke’s output has been given all sorts of hilarious names – in fact, there are probably more comedy genre definitions than Hudson Mohawke tunes – but at its heart, the music he makes is hip hop. Twisted, mega-bassy, omni-directional and individualistic hip hop, for sure, but hip hop all the same in its predilection for assimilating all forms of music into a whole new whole. Dancehall-spiked near-banger ‘Thunder Bay’, released as a teaser to great blog hysteria, shows off his dynamic sophistication, which is deft enough to make rave horn stabs sound listenable. Opener ‘Octan’ is a deceptively twinkly delight that doesn’t outstay its welcome. But it’s ‘All Your Love’ that is the EP’s highlight. A busy, psychedelic sunburst of brittle soundbursts and speeded-up vocals supported by an irresistibly big beat and a cast of nervously ethereal synths swooping and jittering on the peripheries. It sounds like a great ’90s piano-acid anthem filtered through the ears of a psychotic, and is all the better for it.
