Last year’s eponymous debut album from Two Fingers saw Amon Tobin decamping to Montreal with collaborator Joe ‘Doubleclick’ Chapman and UK MC Sway in tow, to construct a collection that saw them applying lessons learned from drum and bass and leftfield electronics to a more hip hop-oriented structure. Twelve months on, this follow-up collection gathers together as its title suggests, the twelve instrumental backing tracks that made up the debut sans vocals, but also deftly manages to avoid simply being collector-oriented filler by throwing in an additional ten completely new tracks. While the instrumental versions of previously released tracks such as ‘That Girl’, ‘Keman Rhythm’ and ‘Not Perfect’s certainly highlight the creepy detailed atmospherics often lost amidst Sway’s rapid wordplay, it’s frequently the new tracks here that offer up the biggest highlights, as well as perhaps clues as to where the duo are headed next.
‘High Life’ provides easily one this record’s most ferocious thrill rides, fusing vast clattering tribal percussion breaks with buzzing industrial distortion that flickers like a shorting powerline against flashes of Latin guitar, while ‘Have It Like That’s stays firmly ensconced in the darkness as contorted, howling synth noise battle for space with militaristic snare clatters and growling sub-bass tones. Elsewhere, ‘Combat Rhythm’ sees a Middle Eastern-tinged atmosphere shifting to the foreground as shimmering snake-charmer flutes and reversed instrumentation glides beneath icily precise hip hop rhythms, and sudden string flourishes, before ‘Subway Rhythm’ closes things with the sorts of murderous, armour-plated post-junglist atmospherics that you might associate with King Cannibal or Kevin Martin. In many senses, it’s a direction that perhaps hints back more towards the finely detailed dystopian soundscapes explored on Tobin’s Foley Room album, and it’s the inclusion of these new tracks that offers up the real meat here, making this significantly more than just an instrumentals collection.
Chris Downton
