eMusic Review 0
Between recent releases from Dâm Funk, Flying Lotus, Zomby, Rustie, Joker and Guido, the electronic-funk avant garde is sounding healthier than it has in years. Add Glasgow's Hudson Mohawke (24-year-old Ross Birchard) to that list. His debut album, Butter, is a tour de force of shuddering drum programming and hypercolor synthesizers, a mischievous and jubilant record that uses the gaudy, glassy tones of '80s R&B as a trampoline straight out of the stratosphere. Like all funk after Parliament, it's still hell-bent on returning to the Mothership, but Hudson Mohawke has invented his own highly unorthodox means of transport.
Like Dâm Funk, HudMo is a faithful and adept scholar of classic funk styles, lacing his tracks with references to everything from D Train to Trouble Funk, Bootsy Collins to OutKast; his lurching beats are obviously indebted to Dilla, but Mohawke's concept of the boom-bap is also clearly tangled up with dubstep, a genre that, like drum 'n' bass, imagines rhythm as being a little like the American highway system, where the fast track runs parallel to meandering blacktop. As a listener, you have the option of proceeding at your own pace. Where so much electronic music focuses… read more »