• Search
• Subscribe

Hazy Lazy is Francis Harris' love letter to Los Angeles right down to the shrewd usage of the ubiquitous Big Bully on the vocals. The LA scene has always been an unspoken hub of underground dance music with myriad scenes over the years ebbing and flowing over the years but right now the Culprit label run by the talented DJ trio Droog is capturing the pulse of the city.

Previous releases from Jamie Jones and Kenneth James Gibson helped to establish the new label but Adultnapper's release feels more like a commissioned work than the typical big name floor fodder product. This release comes across like a real collaboration with Harris and Big Bully (AKA Dawson Baca) sitting down like many other great artists have the past and took in all of the City of Angels' seediness - from Hermosa Beach to Chatsworth - and created a little two track deep house paean to all of the city's bacchanalian, sometimes tawdry, after dark delights. The final package is deep, dark, trippy soul with a heavy side of Bukowski and other sick delights that will either freak out a packed dance floor or keep them glued to it - either way, this one is a keeper.

Adultnapper's crisp editing on the percussion is the main focus on this track with Big Bully using his vocal more as poetic texture - words as tone clusters - than typical verse-chorus-verse vocal house. "Hazy Lazy" is deep and there's a certain sense of listening satisfaction spawning from the fact that the two are trying to make a futuristic track that strips some of pop music's most basic trappings out of it. The only drawback here is the blipping synth melodies, which could have taken a back seat in places to the rich pads underneath. But mostly this feels like a lonely night sitting on the breakwater at Venice Beach waiting either for the drowning waves or the psychedelics to kick in cutting right to the heart of the darkness right below the surface of all the Hollywood glamour.

Lie To Me isn't quite as stunning as "Hazy Lazy" but does offer the perfect compliment as the b-side. The track is also very deep and groove oriented, this one with more focus on the dub house sound. Again, Harris paints in all of the corners with restrained musical touches that enrich the track and pump life in to its relatively simple structure. Baca's vocals are a little more straightforward, but buried in the mix, straining listeners to decipher his actual words. It's a smart ploy that captures the attention but doesn't distract from the overall minimalism by trying to inject some sort of deeper meaning into the song. The track cries out as an anthem to LA's illegal warehouse party culture - past, present, and future and has definitely served notice that Culprit has arrived.

Artist: Adultnapper feat. Big Bully Title: Hazy Lazy EP Label: Culprit Tracklist Hazy Lazy-Adultnapper feat. Big Bully Lie To Me www.culpr.it www.adultnapper.com www.myspace.com/adultnapper Our Rating: 7,5/10