Exhilarating hip-hop instrumentals and hyperactive odd-tronica from one of the UK's most promising beat-crafters. Already lauded by Gaslamp Killer, Pitchfork and Mary Anne Hobbs (who singled him out as her 'Favourite Unsigned Artist of 2010'), Young Montana has now found a home with Alpha Pup. Most artists take a few years in the spotlight to develop, but this wee fella - apparently only 20 years old - feels already like the finished article, his debut full-length a dazzlingly ambitious and fully-realized affair. Hailing from sunny Coventry, his abundant musicality and kinetically edited style brings to mind vintage Prefuse 73, splicing and dicing fragments of steamy soul, techno, grime, folk and On The Corner-style freak jazz into lurching, luminescent beat patterns that make even Mike Slott's junkyard-falling-off-a-cliff beat style sound static. It's tough to pick favourites, but the way the looped lovers' vocals and breezy horns of 'Bad.day' dissolve dramatically into a sea of undulating, echo-plexed techno-dub is one of the album's most arresting moments. 'Mynnd' is the sound of YM's imagination in overdrive, climaxing in a heads-down groove fashioned out of sawing, distorted bass and twitchy drum edits that nudge us into almost avant-garage territory. 'Hot Heathrr' shows just what can be achieved with genuine talent and some decent cracked software these days, with what feels like a million different melodious samples and drum clusters battling for supremacy. Yes, there are moments where you wish he'd stop fiddling and just let the groove do the talking, but it's churlish to complain; that really ain't the game he's playing. And while there's a hell of a lot going in every track, it's arranged and spliced with great discipline; even the busiest compositions are coherent and balanced and that's exactly what makes it such a mind-boggling trip to listen to. Honestly, if this was Hudson Mohawke's new album then everyone at the planet would be hailing it as a masterpiece; don't let the fact that Young Montana is less well-known obscure the magnitude of his achievement. Big up. boomkat
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