Mansbestfriend — Poly.Sci.187

Poly.Sci.187 is surprisingly rewarding for several reasons, firstly it’s an Anticon instrumental release that is consistent and entertaining through out, and a lot of their instrumental attempts in the past have been very mixed, to put it mildly. Secondly for those not in the know Mansbestfriend is Sole’s DIY project, which has always been very much a hit and miss affair, compared with his own named releases.

He just seems to get the mix just right between; tuneful lo-grade and dusty electronica, ambience, synth scapes, hip-hop beats, often political/edgy voice samples, and various instrumental textures sampled and otherwise. Every track has really been worked on long and hard to build up the sound textures and grainy samples depth, so as a result the tracks don’t just follow predictable instrumental hip-hop or electronica routes, there’s a very free and haphazard feel about it all, but it never completely falls apart or sounds amateurish.  To create the album he used Dr Sample (one of the mainstay many Anticon productions), A mono mixing desk that stutters (this really gives a great plaster & taped together and dusty vibe to the album), Wurlitzer Organ, some guitar elements and of course a few musical and dialogue samples.  A few of the stand out moments here would be; Spin the humans that uses a sample of a  Lebanese child talking about peace, which gets mixed in with hovering synth and guitar, big crackling beats and a Arabic violin sample. The Teaching of Leviticus uses 80’s synth melodic weave and a bizarre matter-of-fact sample talking about the punishment  of people who have sex with animals and  partaking in witch craft. 6milloin wayz 2live ends the album in sombre grainy cinematic tone, utilizing beautiful sad stretched out and dusty ambient textures with melodica  played by Ryan Finch of Skyrider.

It’s always nice to be surprised and thoroughly enjoy an album when your not expecting to, I can safely say this is up their with some of soles and Anticon’s best work