Dimensions 4 EP

Where to start with this monster EP? It's a toss up between Lomax and Culture Shock though hard to single one highpoint. OK: Lomax it is. Lomax, tipped by Fabio back in 2007, comes on with such a swagger with the 'Jungle FX' that you can't help but fall into step: big brassy clarion synth and I swear that it'll be a tough job getting past the first few bars of ick/snare before the call goes up to drag it back. Snagging, snaking, filthy neck-snapper of a tune, just watch the bassbin part of the PA flap ALARMINGLY. If they wrote this Back In the Day people would now go misty-eyed over it, sobbing 'They don't write 'em like that no more'. The same could be said of the superb Future Funk of Culture Shock's (top!) 'Gears': perfect for mid-set, a slick, heads-down party roller. Speaking of gears, Xample's collab with Jakes steps up a couple & actually feels uncharacteristically aggro but delivers because of that. Greasy! Noisia rounds off the piece with 'Deception', all firmed-up with a grainy old Michael Caine/John Barry
spy film vibe, which is quickly mugged by some ugly digital distortion on the contemporary production front and run down by trademark Noisia beats: fluid, crystal, yet hard as nails. Murder. All in all what comes off repeatedly from the 'Dimensions 4 ep' is a crazy deja-vu, something in the sound, the rollers and unshakable RAM attitude from the ground up: think RAM's production and A&R skills to legendary club nights from then to now, you just know it's immediately them behind. And to think: 10 years back RAM were unleashing killers in the form of
'Molten Beats' LP and pre-millenium anthems such as 'Round The Corner', and here we are now, business as usual, 'Dimensions 4' being a perfect snapshot... and our computers didn't malfunction after all for the 'Y2K'.