JOHN TALABOT

DJ KiCKS (!K7)

16/20

There’s a sense of anachronism attached to the mix CD in 2013: at a time when we can endlessly wade through freely available mixes and podcasts, why bother going out and paying for one? Without wishing to come across as a pompous pseudo-Paul Morely, the physicality of the CD intends to establish a sense of timelessness that an encoded online file can never aspire to. Think of how mixes like Michael Mayer’s Immer, or Cosmic Galactic Prism by Prins Thomas act as artefacts of a moment in time, how they crystallise a genre, a sound, an audio-ideology. John Talabot’s done that. Pinging between the sadder, softer ends of house (Max Mohr’s seminal melancholic Old Song, his own teary/bleary 6am classic Without You), gorgeously thick chord workouts and seasick percussive skittering, there’s a real sense of cohesion, a seamless unseemingly constructed construction. Talabot is a master of emotional manipulation – he knows when to hang onto sad melodies before letting them drift into half-remembered bliss, when to sneak in the poingant vocal snippets, when to nudge the tempo up and when to cool things off. Like Mayer and Prins Thomas did on their aforementioned mixes, Talabot has captured the essence of his own epoch.

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Words: Josh Baines