Title: Tusken Raiders : Bantha Trax
Label: Clear CLR 407
Format: 12" (1000 clear vinyl)
Tracks: Raider Beetz
Tatooine Sunset
Gaderffi Stick
Sexy Sandpeople
Beatnik #3
Mike Paradinas, better known as Mu-Ziq, makes his debut on the Clear label.
In a recent interview in I-D magazine, he stated that the Tusken Raiders
project would be his first dancefloor record and it kind of shows through.
Raider Beetz opens the EP and is a very short 30 second crunchy 808 electro
jam. It's quickly followed by Tatooine Sunset which has more of a tribal
flavour than previous Mike P tracks -- a strong percussion and rhythm section
over mu-ziq style beats and then pushed though the Popcorn filter. Its
fairly repetative on the surface, but if you dig down underneath you can
hear the trademark mu-ziq drum madness and constant distorted
transformations and phases that defines his sound. Gaderffi Stick ends
the first side with a sound that I imagined the Aphex/Mu-Ziq collaboration
would sound like. it opens with a jungle breakbeat which then collides
with some afx style noise percussion and works its way into quite a
track, if only there was more. Sexy Sandpeople, which opens the second side,
is really the weak spot on this EP for me. Its got plenty of Mu-Ziq
funk and flavour but just goes on and on and really achieves very little.
The EP ends on a high-note however with some human beatbox action in
another short track throughout which the distortion is turned up and up
over Mu-Ziq machine madness. Not all I'd hoped it to be, but still
another strong release from Mike P and Clear.
:: Alan M. Parry
:: fluid@hyperreal.com
:: <finger me for PGP key>
::
http://hyperreal.com/~fluid