This pulse is connected to heart, soul and scrotum as Glasgow duo Craig Morrison and Graeme Reedie prepare to celebrate their tenth year in 2009 with a fourth album which, if this monster is anything to go by, will tower over the pack like the previous three. They have this knack of straddling anything from the deepest early hours underground dub-house to lush, cinematic emotion-wrenchers; lethally-dynamic in groove and rich in atmosphere and melody, making it all sound as effortless as a kangaroo’s mid-air fart. The boys’ own Hypno House Dub mines the deepest of deep house seams, built on subtly-insidious keyboard riffs laced with spooked effects and muttering acid over which a bloke intones Orb-style about nature. The Darkroom Dub – a reference to their strides-busting label – dims the lights and manages to intricately steer proceedings even deeper into luminous mole-stiffie territory. Mile Caro and Frank Garcia also contribute a remix which takes the track apart and reconstructs with live playing to create a gorgeous take which installs extra-terrestrial central heating in the bottom department. Bonus track ‘Call Of The Wild’ is one of those widescreen space-epics the boys do so well, setting up a lowdown bass-propelled groovescape which drops to bring in haunting string theme and an ever-ascending glorious barrage of new riffs and sequences. The breakdown really is on a clawing-at-the-ceiling epic scale. What a year Soma have had and here’s the cherry on the cake, the whipped cream on the hippo’s bell-end, the… you get the idea.
5 Out Of 5
Reviewed By: Kris Needs
