Jamie Lidell, Mark Hawkins – Let It Slide / HTH149A

RELEASE: Let It Slide
ARTIST(S): Jamie Lidell, Mark Hawkins

REMIXERS:

LABEL: Houndstooth | HTH149A
GENRE: LOSSLESS, Electronica
RELEASED: 2021-07-07
AVAILABLE FORMAT: 1006Kbps/LOSSLESS
DOWNLOAD SIZE: 27.41 MB

TOTAL TRACKS 1

1. Jamie Lidell, Mark Hawkins – Let It Slide (03:47) key, bpm94

Total Playtime: 00:03:47 min

Coming through as a producer in the early 2000’s, nothing much seemed normal. The whirlwind of 90s dance music innovation had given way to a lack of focus, with increasingly innovative and accessible technology making the sounds heard on dancefloors more eclectic but at the same time the parties had started to feel less inspired, as if it were too hard to keep hold of the magic that had swirled around us for the last 10 years.

Against this backdrop, Mark Hawkins immediately stood out by how grounded he was compared to most of the space cadets floundering with their musical calling. Watching one of his staggeringly raw live sets, ripping up the floor with a combination of jacking Chicago house and bare bones techno was to see a pragmatic idealist carving out a unique space, unashamed to reference his inspirations with humour and bombast.

It was perhaps inevitable that Mark’s boundless spirit would see him push through the barriers of the UK’s more experimental audiences to gain greater presence with his entrance to a more underground House sound. Releases followed on Dixon Avenue Basement Jams and Clone before arriving on Houndstooth, blending House and Techno in a way that reached for the sky even while their roots were clearly planted firmly in the ground. Whilst always tough-as-painted-nails, the music progressed from being identifiable through its keen rawness to displaying increasing sophistication.

During a lost year that’s been anything but normal, it’s no surprise that Mark has dug deeper, gathering his influences and ideals into a more experimental, yet relevant and cohesive whole. The Twelve tracks on this new album represent a blossoming of Mark’s creativity; freed from the constraints of immediate dance-floor delivery they explore new territory, rampaging over a landscape of electro-funk, body-rocking house, experimental electronica, euphoric pop, and reflective chill out all underpinned by his accomplished melodic sensibility.

Lead single from the album from the old ways and into the new is ‘Let It Slide’, his second collaboration with Jamie Lidell (following 2018’s “We Should Be Free”) that tears up the rulebook. Beat’s stumble and stutter, resolving in angular B-boy grooves while the bass line sounds like it’s being slapped out by a P Funk-addicted robotic jackhammer. In its sheer disregard for musical conventions, it reprises Lidell’s previous work with Cristian Vogel in their genre-destroying freakbeat combo, Super Collider, and perfectly sums up an album that challenges what ‘normal’ from now on should be.