Sam Shackleton’s bass mutations have, in recent years – owing both to his many collaborations with other artists and to a shift towards more expansive, fiddlier and more psychedelic tracks – moved ever further away from the dancefloor. His fifth solo album edges back towards it, but leaves a back door open. Then again, his music has never moved anywhere in straight lines.
What we hear on Euphoria Bound is dense, gives off little more than the illusion of space, and refuses to stand still even in its quieter passages. The way Shackleton uses drums and rhythms whose origins lie far beyond European borders, or the way he deploys chanting vocal samples, has always invited an exoticising language around his music. And yet, with Euphoria Bound, he has definitively made the kind of album that knows no place. Wherever the grooves in tracks such as »The Unbeliever’s Pulse« screw us towards, there is every chance that none of us has ever been there before.
»Crushing Realities« is a good example of what it means to imagine music for a club standing at the edge of an abyss. Tender memories of the Skull Disco days resurface as the bass presses beneath the lashing beat, which cuts off the percussion whenever something like a melody begins to emerge. Even so, you would have to search long and hard to find such a hypnotic leg-entangler elsewhere in his catalogue. Even after more than 20 years in the business, Shackleton still manages to weave fresh ideas into his iconic style.
Euphoria Bound
