Original Recipe

One of the gems from Vinyl Republik’s mixed bag compilation Fear Of A Digital Planet, the Original Recipe album is consistently impressive beyond the single "The Chase.” Mellow and transcendent harmonies surrounded by loose and scattered break beats and glitch-y blips form the basis for a down-tempo style featuring shades of RJD2 and Caribou. An electronic project permitted, as increasingly many are nowadays, by the process of remote collaboration, Noisette finally came to fruition after a number of visits to the Bay Area by Dean Williams (QuasiMojo) of Toronto and the Indiana-based Steve Mason. With the heavy sampling required by the nature of the relationship, the pair counterpoint natural textures with more treated sounds to create a warm, light-hearted ambience beneath the energetic broken beats. The few tracks with campy ’60s vocal samples are a little tacky, given that this modus operandi has been gratuitously over-used in trip-hop, but instrumentally the album borders on flawless, with five-and-a-half-minute epic "Klymaxxx” underlining everything that is good about Original Recipe. Very tasty.