Butter

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Butter album cover
Album Information

Total Tracks: 18   Total Length: 51:47

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philip sherburne

eMusic Contributor

Electronic music columnist for eMusic.com; writer for fishwrap like The Wire, XLR8R, SF Weekly, RES, Nylon, and Wired; columnist for Pitchfork; blogger (www.phi...more »

05.24.10
Using gaudy, glassy '80s R&B as a trampoline straight out of the stratosphere
Label: Warp Records

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 »

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Sundogg

If, on first listen, you think this just a cacophonous collection of beats and bleeps - give it another go. You will then start to peel away the complexity, sheer joy and tongue-in-cheek mash-ups that makes up Hudson Mohawk's eclectic mix on this album. When you realise what he is doing, you will able to sit back and relax in the knowledge that you are listening to a genius at work.

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They Say All Music Guide

The artwork’s liable to convert any room in which it is viewed into a makeshift vomitorium, and the music — from a Glaswegian producer possibly named after connected New York rivers, albeit with a vowel thrown in for Google-proofing — is absolutely “acquired taste” territory. Sometimes needlessly complex and, at its worst, goofy for the sake of being goofy — proper boots-in-a-dryer bizniz with shrill flotsam swirling about — these tracks can be as off-putting as they are exhilarating. A fearless scrap heap mutation that incorporates icebox IDM crunch, DayGlo synthesizer funk and, most notably, late-’80s/early-’90s R&B flourishes — exemplified by “Just Decided”‘s synthetic horns and “Twistclip Loop”‘s keyboard sprites — the album is nonetheless deeply affecting in stretches. Its best sequence, near the end, begins with “Tell Me What You Want from Me,” where Art of Noise-level grandeur combines with a taut titanium-strength beat worthy of Swizz Beats, tailor-made for its open-hearted Dâm-Funk vocal. “FUSE” follows, bearing a disarmingly uplifting synthesizer patterns of drawn-out notes over rattling percussion and a strangely enhancing wordless vocal sample. “Star Crackout”‘s spectral opera is the come down, which melts into “Allhot,” where blunt kick drums and chintzy snares are an unlikely match for female vocalist Nadsroic’s sighing advances. The album’s first half isn’t short on moving moments, either. It’s highlighted by “Joy Fantastic” — nothing if not a modern funk slammer, quite possibly potent enough to turn André 3000 and Cee-Lo Green er, well, green. – Andy Kellman

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