Long ago, leftfield junglists like Mike Paradinas and Luke Vibert were tagged as weirdy-beardy experimentalists for the woolly excesses of their edit-happy tracks, in contrast to the precision engineering of more straightforward (and, presumably, clean-shaven) breakbeat scientissts. But just as Vibert went back to his praise-Winstons roots with the dubby, almost purist Amen Andrews project, on "Ease Up" Paradinas leaves the beard-step to Woody Allen, concentrating ...more

OK, despite the coverage I gave Mike 'µ-Ziq' Paradinas in my Absorb incarnation, i thought he was losing the plot a bit with his last 'Bilious Paths' long player. His smart and inventive approach to melody and rhythm lost under a sea of DSP overkill with knobs that probably went all the way to 11.

'Ease Up' gives us a chance to revisit the folder labelled 'old school'. Initially sounding like 1990 in stasis, even this caves in to his jackhammer tendencies and we ...more