- Vester Koza's self-titled debut is rough around the edges, but that's barely the point. Most of what makes its four tracks so compelling is a bit harder to pin down. The London producer composes tentative, cleverly caressed grooves, deployed with levels of patience and discipline that reward repeated listens. Opener "Mosquito" is the record's most immediate piece, and its early-hours lope is reminiscent of Keith Worthy or Rick Wade. But the track contains something enticingly elliptical which steers it from Detroit house pastiche; its parts are angularly arranged but softened via processing, and the result is at once tightly-wound funk and dreamy smear.
Squashed centerpiece "The Pagan Groove of San Francisco" locks into a lumbering, reverb-laced groove and stays there, while drones and bouncing bass lend it a sort of stoned levitation. "Transit" is underlined by an EBM pound, but slips into a shifty framework of tonalities, which alternate between lushness and paranoia. The patterns on subdued finale "The Way (of the dub)" blink on and off, like a sketch on Jan Jelinek's drowsy Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records. It takes a confident artist to let their pieces breathe like Vester Koza does here.
Tracklist A1 Mosquito
A2 Transit
B1 The Pagan Groove Of San Francisco
B2 The Way (Of The Dub)