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Depth Charge's musical guiding light, J. Saul Kane, is often credited with being one of the originators of a musical genre that eventually became known as trip-hop. Like many musical genres, trip-hop started off with promising recordings that featured new innovative use of samples and broad free-ranging compositions that challenged the imagination. Over a very short period of time though, the genre fell into cliche, repetitiveness and dull stoner boredom.
This fine EP recalls the earlier more creative days of trip-hop and features enough live keyboard work to keep things jazzy and real. Keyboardist Harry Twinch is the star of the show on this one. He's not really a great soloist laden with technique, but he does have a really cool, very fat sounding analog synthesizer that makes my stereo speakers beg for mercy.
My favorite cut is 'Poison Clan 95' on which Twinch breaks out a very nasty distorted B3 that plays funky riffs on top of a relentless wah-wah guitar riff while Kane provides Hong Kong style gangster film ambiance and automatic gun fire. This is a great EP that recalls the early glory days of a much maligned genre.