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Various: Is This Code

This attractive pink package from Empathy Recordings contains a current selection of crisp and clean breakbeat cuts from capital city collaborators. Interesting to compare with the grungier Kog Boomschwack compilation, this is closer to the breaks equivalent of ‘Lazy Sunday’, which can be a perfect choice at the tail end of a weekend comedown. Rich coffee compared with cranky speed. The oft-employed doppler-effect synth washes lend a new age cosmopolitan vibe to proceedings - you can imagine the attractive, neo-spiritual jetsetter types getting down to these excursions in a paddock somewhere. Hoyager impresses with a feelgood foray into the twilight zone between Robert Miles and Grooverider. The Lorax track reminds of Flanger or Skalpel with its fractured jazz inflections. A devil’s advocate might say that the ‘freshest breakbeat ideas’ in NZ haven’t really progressed much from the UK jungle stuff of the late ‘90s, but I’m not him. This is a well crafted compilation obviously made with a good deal of aroha that will reward repeat listening.

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