Bookworms: African Rhythms (Digi)

By the time something drifts to california, it's always undone, pulled apart by the sunlight: The broken rhythmic tic of UK bass musics washed up clues on the shore for Bookworms, whose re-imagining (not remix) of Mi Ami's 'African Rhythms' is what he describes as a 'an open ended question or love letter' to the musics he loves. Delayed chants that sound lifted or remembered from Bill Gunn's 1972 avant-garde blaxploitation classic Ganja and Hess, which gradually reveal a lover's rock refrain, weave over breaks reminiscent of prime IG Culture and melancholy, foggy synth drifts. Like Gunn's film, 'African Rhythms' shares a delirious fever state that collapses past and present, the street and inner space. In the mix are traces of garage, broken beat, and funky, but this is not reverent bass nostalgia: 'African Rhythms' pushes past fashion to wire a new set of rhythmic histories and spaces: the track sounds equally tuned to solitary late night rollage and body-dense warehouses. The A side of this digital single is backed by two remixes: a 4x4 tuff melancholy Theo Parrish-style banger by Yao, and an ambient, abstracted daydream by Fat Transfer, whose disorienting EQ and filter work take the original even further out.

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