P'taah

It's rare, but sometimes the sequel is better than the original. When Chris Brann stepped away from his highly successful Wamdue production persona last year, he left the house for a far more leftfield take on dance music. As P'taah, the prolific multi-instrumentalist created Compressed Light, a beautifully textured, heavily jazz influenced treasure. Here, on Decompressed, a number of those gems are reinterpreted by cutting edge UK and European producers. It's a perfect match as the Atlanta-based Brann's musical sensibility is strongly in sync with the nu jazz and broken beat sounds emerging from the other side of the ocean. It's also clear that the remixers are fans of the original work, adding their elements and signature sounds while maintaining the emotion and spirit of P'taah's originals. Together they've created electronic jazz of the highest order, encompassing techno, swing, house, breakbeat, bossa and more to produce a sound that is very much of its time. With remixers including Chateau Flight, Nubian Mindz, Kirk Degiorgio and others, the quality is top-notch. Ashley Beedle shows his slinky, subtle side while reworking "Compressed Light" into a piece that feels like a foreign world, like swimming on an ocean's bottom, surrounded by bright colours and odd moving objects. Opaque, aka Seiji, lets a monster loose with the fierce, instant classic that is "The Crossing (Evacuation of Form)." The West London hero stays true to Brann's vision while fleshing it out with unique squiggles of sound and incredible, so-phat-they-break beats. P'taah himself also shines, with three previously unreleased tracks that contextualise this project beautifully, including the quirky, inspired "Panoptic" and the absolutely irresistible "Flying High," a sensitive, sweet trademark track featuring nature sounds, syncopated rhythms, Brazilian flair and stunningly spacious production. Perfect.