Acid Rapper
HypeLTD04Next up on Hypercolour’s tidy vinyl off shoot is Berlin based but Chicago and Detroit indebted producer Murphy Jax. Through releases on Clone Jack For Daze and Tiga’s Turbo, Jax has laid out his classically minded house vision in style - something he does again with two originals and two remixes on this Hype debut.
A1 ‘Acid Rapper’ is exactly that – a man raps in the style of old school heroes Jungle Wonz whilst an acid line blips away beneath, scurry in and out of splintered and woody beats and pinging perc. Soft pads emanate from its core throughout to nicely offset the rawness of the claps and the whole thing will have you dancing like it’s 1989.
‘The Acid Housekeeper’ is not so in your face at first, and instead a simple bassline is the main feature of a track on which Jax raps with a retro tinge once again. The 303 lines come in phases rather than continually on this one, with some big claps and smooth hi-hats all seeping in, gradually upping the anti until you’re in the midst of another busy dancefloor workout straight from a warehouse party in Illinois you never even went to.
Jax provides us with his own remix, and an edit from Dsb accompanies ‘The Acid Housekeeper’ to complete the package: first, the deep Detroit mix sounds like its being recorded at the other side of the room instead of loud in the mix. The vocal here is more menacing, and the acid line, too, is more intense, where the Dsb mix very much fits in with the current slo-mo, murky deep house aesthetic. It’s littered with weird sounds, snatched vocal yelps and is a delightfully muddled, unordered affair.
Vocals in dance music are notoriously hard, but Jax makes them work and then some…
About Murphy Jax
Intent on preserving the authenticity found in early Chicago house, with
a love for layered analogue synths, 80s movie music and soulful vocals,
Berlin-
based producer Murphy Jax is sticking to his guns. And it has paid off.
His debut release ‘It’s The Music’ on Clone Records last year attracted
support from everyone from Ripperton to Konrad Black and Simon Baker and
led to a slew of releases on Turbo and My Favourite Robot Records, as
well as a Mixmag podcast this year. Next he’s adding another genre to
his repertoire by bringing hip house back with a release Hypercolour.