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Various

Purple

TipWorld (UK)

Let’s cut to the chase shall we. Is it any good? (Yeah, it is.) Is it Tip back to the old form again? (Nah. I dunno. Maybe. Look, this is hard for me to come to terms with, okay?) Hypersonic Whomen take all of sixty seconds to drop into a hefty beat that really gets the pulse racing. It’s got that kinda underwater-shuffle feel to it, and instantly the album’s already better than last year’s Red. It picks up energy, adds a wonderfully-mastered sample, sketches out a bit, and then one of the most distinctive breakdowns in quite some time… it clatters back, and everything comes together in a stomp that’s simultaneously disjointed and smooth. Hujaboy’s fat, blobby production gets stretched out on Home Alone, wazzing about with melodies until another quirky break, which drops into a very individual-sounding final run that has a nod to the staccato-disco-rhumba of latter Infected Mushroom, et flows more smoothly. Things, then, are going well before Quadra comes in with T-Funk, a nicely produced little number but one that sounds just like all his other output. Bah. Alien Project’s Melting Colours should be psyreviews’ pet hate of the week – an alien project bassline, a sample that I *think* is Raja Ram but… the drop after the breakdown is possibly almost as maybe kinda as… um…. Er… Gah. Just say it, damion… almost almost almost almost maybe up there with Silent Running. Almost. Gah. There, I said it. One hot bath and half a bottle of Dettol later, we return to be greeted by Dynamic’s Alienware, which features some decent bassline shifts and tricks to change the mood nicely, shifting to a more menacing key but not really exploding in any particular direction. Spiritual Enhancer step up with Smoking Underwater which, you may notice, sounds a bit like Smoke On The Water, the deep purple “anthem of a generation” and the only one tune in the universe that everyone’s girlfriend can play on the guitar. At two minutes, the SOTW riff comes in, and fair go it doesn’t ride on out thru the rest of the track. Cheesy yes, effective yes, I think this would do the trick on the dancefloor (DJs take note, as chicks love guitars). Sesto Sento’s wonderful Sneaky Sneaky gets remixed by Triptych, and it’s a great marriage of sounds. It’s airy, it’s sounding completely different to what’s come before, and the midsection is made for ‘drunkendancing’ (our favourite wiggle chez psyreviews). Things get better with Dark Star from Aphid Moon and Lucas: a belter. Belter, belter, belter, belter. Belter. It retains perfect layering and energy all the way up to a wonderful break, and then explodes into a great section full of stabbing acid which, at the moment, I simply can’t play enough times. Then – shock, horror – a goa melody comes in, held in place by psychedelic pscaffolding (bear with me) and it works in a way that we’ve seriously not witnessed in years. Cue a stretchy sketchy second break, and a miraculously stuttered drop into more acidised oldskool goodness. Oldskool yet newskool. May I politely suggest that Jules and Lucas lock themselves up in a studio for however long it takes to give us more. (I know you both read psyreviews… do the decent thing and give us more. There.) We’ve peaked, but not before Johann comes from wherever he’s been lately and remixes (I think, I lost the inlay on the original old tip CD, so I’m not sure on the artist, rest assured if I’m wrong some friendless trainspotter will email me and advise me, complete with catalogue numbers) Mandra Gora’s Everything’s Going Fine. Never felt too comfortable with the original, but this remix is a worthy one, nostalgic yet with this raw, edgy sound which makes one politely ask if Johann could remix the same artists’ Wicked Warp. So, this album then. It’s the best thing Tip have done since… well definitely since Crystal Skulls, but then you could argue that this is devoid of the ‘philosophy’ behind the Skulls, that this is better… In which case, Purple is their best thing since Beyond Colour. Which was a sod of a long time ago. It may be approaching time to find your old shiva hoody from under your bed and give it an airing. Tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1998.

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