Peabody & Sherman

All Your Bass Are Belong To Us

Taking a turn to the left, Mssrs P&S head out of town to where beats are best, albeit backwards. Mining Afrocentric and South American beat traditions, combining them with contemporary studio trickery and dub stylings, our heroes end up not quite where they expected, which of course is normal. The starting point was the bassheavy nusounds coming from Brazil, Argentina, and Africa, with the endpoint expected to be some new and interesting rhythmic material. As usual, the process begins with some livetracking, but the result has been chopped and flipped so many times, and had a kitchensink'sworth of sounds, and chants, whistles, sirens, and other material appropriated from the World Wide Web, that no one is too sure what came from where, and how they got where they are. The A side starts with a remix by DRM, who typically selects a few elements from the original mix, and weaves an insistant rhythmic slice of dancefloor delicacy. He adds some extra guitar, and then as if from nowhere, some techno-y synth that should sound out of place, but doesn't. That is paired with a second remix, from Chancha via Circuito, who radically slows down the original, but uses most of the basic elements, plus a few tricks of his own. Auditory cough syrup indeed. The B contains three original tracks which are very different in sound and approach. 'Ayayaya' has a long mournful intro which suddenly drops into a mutant funk bass with raucous chant provided by some Pacific Islanders, toss some drunken horn choruses on top, and there you have it. 'Last Drunk At The Party? is built on a bent Afrofunk bass, with African chanting and whistles, air horn melodies, more whistles, and then yet more whistles. 'Bahia Shuffle' takes some tuff Batacuda beats, adds oodles of dubbed out keys, and floats spoken word intros from Middle Eastern 78rpm recordings for extra flavour.