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Originally hailing from Brisbane but now recently relocated to Melbourne, instrumental downbeat / hip-hop duo Briztronix attracted significant local acclaim with their 2002 debut EP, with tracks receiving airplay support from Triple J’s Sound Lab, while their 2005 full-length release The Album saw them touring nationally as support to the likes of Curse Ov Dialect, Macromantics and TZU. Two years later, this follow-up effort Structures Of Canyons shows DJ Bacon and Shazam more or less picking up directly from where The Album left off, with the 16 tracks collected here following a dusty instrumental trajectory reminiscent of early Mo’ Wax and Endtroducing-era DJ Shadow. Opening track “Beats From The East’s provides an indicative taste of the sorts of flavours predominating here, with slow, clattering MPC-triggered dusty drum breaks gliding beneath eerie atmospheric string samples, and a flood of turntablist-tweaked horns and vocal snippets, as deep brooding bass lurks in the foreground, to somewhat ominous effect.
By contrast, “Maximum Head Pats’ slows things right down to a spacious crawl, sending icy downbeat electro rhythms tracing a spooky path against cold, ominous John Carpenter-esque synths and manipulated horn samples while Dani Kirby’s spectral chanteuse vocals float through, before “Bacon Sounds Like Shazam’ unleashes a drilling volley of sampler-stuttered beats and menacing minor keys while horror-movie styled orchestration roils and lurches in the background, in what’s easily one of the more paranoia-inducing moments on offer here. Elsewhere, the far more beatific “1995′ sees rippling guitar strokes and majestic horn calls being threaded through the kind of dusty breaks that RJD2 might favour, in one of this record’ more decidedly downbeat jazz-oriented offerings, while “Megasonic’ brings the electronics back to the forefront, placing clipped, stuttering drum machine bursts beneath coldly pulsing synths and showers of snare crashes, to somewhat stellar effect. While there’s a lot packed into Structures Of Canyons at just over an hour’s running length, there’s a cohesive sense of flow here that ensures the interest factor is consistently engaged throughout, resulting in a consistently gripping listen that’s likely to go down particularly well with fans of Mo’ Wax and Ninja Tune.
Chris Downton
