Mad for it Manchester duo and big beat Northern soulsters, Martin Brew and Martin Desai make up the meat and one vege of J-Walk and though this album from the pair shows them as canny sample selectors and able tunesters, there’s a lack of any obvious or consistent character to last the generous length of the album.
Commanding a range of styles and approaches that folks like Rae and Christian and Mr Scruff would be proud of the collection sometimes appears to have been stretched too thin: it tries to accomplish too much with too little attention to detail. The eccentric 60s retro that kicks off the northern soulish ‘Tearaway’ is addictive enough but it’s a little sparse and underdeveloped – a great collection of riffs and hooks – but it’s a lamentable road to nowhere. The jazzy Get Carterisms of stand out track ‘Scarlet Menance’ (featuring the magnificent fibre-packed vocal chords of Veba) does fulfil the promise however, and I expect that more than a couple of listeners will be chucking up good vibes for the tasty brass stabs of the delectable and sexy ‘Soul Vibration’ – a Herb Alpert meets Air minute-steak of cool downtempo.
With a cameo vocal from Guy Garvey from the band Elbow on outstanding track ‘Cariad’ you’d have thought these Northern Beat rebels had hung up their kicks and splashes for a tidy little sum of Zero 7 – but as slinkily ambient as this track is at just 3:38 minutes long it fails to really satisfy the necessary quota.
There are some truly great aspects to ‘A Night On The Rocks’ but the lack of direction and the frantic two-stepping amongst a disruptive mixture of synth-core, trance, funk and big-beat fails to really glue this pot together.