in 2006 i grew tired of the genre that is instrumental hip hop, finding that anything in that area just gave me a cold unwanted chill. i found that i rarely delved into my ninja tune, mo wax archives and when the urge came, it passed quickly as the music didn’t connect with my need for something new and fresh.

thankfully, amongst the crimbo chaos one album was sneaked out that revived my love, but due to the scramble for seasonal  joy was probably missed out on by most, so, here’s another nudge.

simon smerdon aka mothboy has been releasing dark unsettling machine made music for a while now, which while always impressive, has not always been easy to actually love.

this time however, mothboy actively wiped away the soul scraping dirt, and decided to make deviance an album that can be enjoyed by far far more people.

ok, he hasn’t made a lightweight pop album by any stretch of the imagination, and yes there are cobwebbed corners of shade and noir throughout the 50 or so minutes, but these are counter balanced by all manner of excellence making for a fascinating and balanced listen.

the album opens with a scattershot burst of radio static and noise before dropping into the reverbed bass threatening given away that sets the scene brilliantly with its scattershot beats, deep rumblings and fractured vocal samples that manage to form some degree of pattern. then comes one of the albums highlights, triptych, a 4 minute homage to all thing dj shadow-esque but with a global warming doom laden futuristic direction of the produciton, the music is definitely out on a dislocated limb, simon should not be overly surprised if the track in question is licenced to advertisers sometime soon. next up, outside brings some human warmth to the digital proceedings with a looped inner city neo-soul vocal underwhich a pulsating acid house quiggle does its minimal but appropiate best. now that humans have been invited to the party, mothboy now pushes them under the stairs and lets the machine loosen up for a while.

lazy, but hopefully effective, reference points for the trio of tracks, i hit it i caught it i’m out, the gutter song and the title track, deviance, would be to namecheck recent releases by fout tet and prefuse 73, as the music is a similar style of cutup loops (vocal and instrumental), deep foundation ambience and general sonic electronica madness that sometimes verges on the extreme but manages to hold back from all out discomfort.

amazingly, for such a strong set of tracks it’s actually the one that feature vocals that make the album a far stronger and coherent listen.  i can see cities features mothboys old chum on the spit, akira the don, who seems to revel in the fact that he is away from the watchful eye of the hip hop nodders, and therefore, can give it his all for some rather heavy whiskey soaked wordplay, that gives this listener a mental throwback to the horror movie styles of gravediggaz.

the stripped out section is cinematically moody and intense and a lot more unsettling than anything akira has been associated with previously. superb.

once akira blurts out, turn that beeper off it’s back to the acid nightmare of selfish plan that admittedly, does stretch the patience, but when you get to the end, your endurance is richly rewarded by the calming serenity of the ambient prologue, bienambo, that delicately seques into the grand album closer, down, which opens with a late night piano mood, while son of king rebel (aka jeremy allen to all you fact fans) adds tales of lost love, before an overwhelming drawn out guitar noise, random echoed saxaphones, and then the eventual return to structure, all of which brings the album to a downbeat and sombre, but very special climax.

while this is not an album for those saturday nights to get people shuffling about, i would say that this is one that should haunt and demand your attention for many years to come, and if you allow it to do so, then i would like to think that, like me, you’ll willingly fall under the spell of mothboy.