Reconstruction

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The second Fluid Ounce CD release sees nu-jazz/broken beat destroyers Zero DB (label founders Chris Vogado and Neil Combstock) take centre stage. If anything, the main problem with last year's intermittently ace 'Unmeasured' label compilation was that the DB's contributions vastly overshadowed everything else the record had to offer. This, a round-up of their devastating remixes, manages even to usurp their own original work in terms of sheer dancefloor menace, whilst retaining the intricacy and open-mindedness of production that made 'Come Party' and 'The Click' such impressive 12" missives.

Truly, this is modern jazz-influenced dance music with a large, sturdy set of balls. Opening track 'Satellites are Spinning' (a Sun Ra track re-jigged with help from some DJ chap...Giles Peters or something?) gets things rolling in relatively low key style, with quirky off-beat drums underpinning strangely atonal vocal proclamations. Then, starting with a vicious electronic spin on Peace Orchestra's slightly flimsy 'Henry', 'Reconstructions' goes on to neatly enunciate the gap Zero DB have opened up between themselves and their similarly styled peers, by, er, remixing seven shades of sludgy brown stuff out of them. Truby Trio's summery but somewhat tame 'Galicia' is ripped open to unleash a lurching, dark chocolatey double bassline, spiralling acid synth lines and an angular 4-4 thud which, given the right system, will send an earthquake through your breastbone. Similarly, the rewiring of John Kong & Moonstarr's polite Rhodes excursion 'Future Vision' is like being offered saccharine jazz sweets by a stranger at the school gate, who then just grins fiendishly as you start hacking up your trachea on the sub-bass from Satan he has spiked you with.

Not all on 'Reconstructions' hits the spot so hard. The mixes of 'Samba do Gringo' by Suba and 'Xtradition' by Interfearance, despite whipping up between them a perfectly murderous samba storm, share almost identical percussion and sound like slightly recycled versions of each other, while 'E Ruim' by Grupo Bataque rinses the originals decidedly jaunty brass squawkings a little over-zealously.

In sum, however, the inherent toughness of beat and bass on this record - not, it should be said, at the expense of any attention to detail - leaves one pining for others to take the baton from Zero DB and start ruffing up their club-friendly jazz riddims, without automatically applying the thick coat of polish that has sent this music slightly stagnant in recent times. To swing to a strict diet of this filthily funky stuff into the wee hours; what a splendid, sweaty thing that would be.

John Stevens