Ammoncontact broke into the world’s consciousness with a track on the Dublab Presents: Freeways compilation back in 2001, and from these auspicious beginnings have finally arrived at With Voices, their fifth album. Hailing from LA, Carlos Niño and Fabian Ammon, a.k.a. Ammoncontact, neatly straddle the city’s burgeoning jazz and hip hop scenes, the leading lights from which feature on the album. These voices (get it?) are what draw Ammoncontact’s production skills that bit closer to perfection.
Tracks like A Zillion Tambourines and Elevations, both coming around a third of the way through the album, really lay bare the quality of the production at work here. These tracks, two of only four on the album, are both sans special guests; Zillion Tambourines sounds like Double Gone Chapel era Two Lone Swordsmen meets spoken word poetics while Elevations takes us through some warm sounding lo-fi with funky beats.
Inevitably though the real joy of this album comes where Ammoncontact’s friends show their presence; With Voices and Through the Pauses are both shining examples of downbeat hip hop and feature Lil Sci and Sach respectively. Beautiful Flowers builds on these already steady blocks and aims higher: MC skills come courtesy of Organised Konfusion’s Prince Po with able support from Yuseef Lateef and Dwight Trible, adding a great jazz vibe to the proceedings. Other notable guests include Brother J and Cut Chemist (on the same track no less) as well as fellow Ninja Tuner Daedelus.
With Voices is undoubtedly one of the standout albums for the year for me so far. It avoids the usual pitfalls of producer + special guests albums by actually keeping a coherent production style throughout, arguably pulling it off better than Coldcut’s Sound Mirrors earlier in the year. Ammoncontact have indisputably placed their finest work to date on this album.
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