Mark Pritchard continues to work on his Warp-trilogy by stylistically tying up the »Lock Off EP« to the first »Ghosts EP« This time, the Britain-born producer who lives in Sydney has shifted his inspirations away from a dubby basis towards more direct and aggressive influences by various urban styles of music. Pritchard, jack-of-all-trades of electronic music, has asked the Ragga Twins for lyrical back up, and the iconic Jungle-grandees bestow a certain timelessness upon the opening track by driving their vocals over tapping breakbeats and grinding loops. Hence, it’s almost impossible to map this style to a certain time period. It’s much easier to date the following HipHop-Steppa track »Ghetto Blast«, which tries to define current styles of American ghetto-tech variations between Trap and Juke through linear sound-snippets of broad horn-samples and police sirens. Juke is also to be found in the swirling snares of »Soundboy Fuck Off«, a grim celebration of Pirate Radio. They force the somewhat low-key bass-structure of the title track »Lock Off« to take the back seat, which is a shame, because compared to the cold and structured finesse of the other tracks, »Lock Off« is the emotional center of the EP. It just wobbels along without much gimmicking and is accompanied by a 160bpm-beat. It’s this variety and the absence of any predictability which make Mark Pritchard’s versatility as thrilling as it is incomprehensible.
Lock Off
