- London's Jack Dixon has been zig-zagging around tech house and bass music, staking a middle ground between the chunky (his remix of Bwana) and waify (his floaty ambient garage EP on Apollo). Above from the Below marks his debut on the somewhat schizo Under 5s, and the label gets two tracks that find Dixon at his most hybridized.
The creaky breakbeat of "Lose Myself" struts through a poor-visibility blizzard of arctic string samples, with just the hint of a skip. It's enough to remind of the producer's London heritage, not to mention its wonderfully jumpy bassline that plays the double-time trickster to the tracky drum pattern—it adds necessary heft to a song that otherwise feels like it might drift away on a sea of bass music clichés. Taking things away from house to territory that more resembles drum & bass, "I'm Never Right" is a fidgety number that clicks and clacks through another thick fog of atmospherics, with warbly disembodied voices at every turn. It's the same precarious mixture of deluxe synths, hackneyed R&B vocal samples and a killer ear for rhythm section intricacy that thankfully never loses its footing on the tightrope of good taste.
Dauwd's remix, however, steals the show. The Pictures Music artist loosens the limbs of "Lose Myself" into an easy jaunt, leaving room for a bouncy bassline that pops in halfway through to redress the track with an infectious melody that'll be stuck in your head for days. Funnily enough, Dauwd strikes an even poppier chord than Dixon's lullabies with a track that's arguably much more concerned with the dance floor.
Tracklist 01. Lose Myself
02. I'm Never Right
03. Lose Myself (Dauwd Remix)