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Chris JossYou've Been Spiked ESL Music/Shock We've all been touched by those groove-robbers with their come-hither graphics and tantalising retro fonts. They promise something old and somehow new yet usually deliver a swift descent into cafe-del-chill-out elevator music torpor. Not so when 'You've Been Spiked': this disc stays fun throughout. While biting the mod scene for the cover Chris Joss is smart enough not to just sit on the lounge-tastic swinging beat behind Early Morning Wanderings and Discotheque Dancing. Rather he keeps mixing up his influences so as to stay lively if always only steps away from pastiche. The cover blurb promises "a dose of obscure samples" and for once it's not an attention-grabbing gambit of desperate button-stabbing but a deftly integrated soupcon of noise to spice things up. The laid-back, string-laden sway of Waves Of Love could be The Avalanches while Drink Me Hot invariably recalls 'Check Your Head' era Beastie Boys. Then Wrong Way Street charges straight into blaxploitation score territory and to bring things down a little Riviera 69 might as well bear the parenthetical (Love Theme From). All in all persuasively paced, held together by some very sweet basslines. Aside from composing, performing, producing and directing the accompanying video clip the monomaniacal Chris Joss also had a hand in the sleeve art. He knows what he's selling and for once it ends up sounding as amusing as it looks.  |
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