LEE BANNON

Alternate Endings (Ninja Tune)

15/20

It’s an interesting time to release a record like Alternate/Endings. With the distance between excitement and cynicism ever narrowing, the prospect of an American releasing what has been described as a ‘jungle album’ on UK mainstay Ninja Tune could easily come across as a well-timed attempt to cash-in on a trend that already has its days numbered.

But this isn’t a jungle record. It’s a record inspired by Bannon’s past and informed by his present, where the jungle and drum & bass that soundtracked his youth rub against the dusted hip-hop that made him and the droning vistas that currently surround him. By making his own breaks rather than sampling the culturally embedded Amen building blocks to create ‘false memories’ – as Paul Woolford’s Special Request project aspires to do – he is free to use them as he wishes. Here they act as glue, binding together ideas and inspiration pulled in ike meteors to a celestial body. If you step back and take in his discography as a whole, it’s clear Bannon is a producer that doesn’t want to be pigeonholed by one record, one sound or one genre. And despite Alternate/ Endings at times blurring together into an amorphous whole, there are enough ideas on display to speculate that Bannon can go exactly where he wants, and make it his own when he gets there.

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Words: Steve Dores