Artist: Kenny Shifter
Title: Fat Ass / Seven
Label: Baroque Limited
By: Carleton Neil | 7 November 2007
Tracklist:

• A: Fat Ass
• B: Seven

Kenny Shifter "Fat Ass / Seven"

Kenny Shifter's music has popped up in various places since the start of the millennium. His work has made it into compilations put out by Fluid Recordings, and 'Six' was featured on Saeed and Palash's 'TIDE:EDIT:07' mix compilation. His more recent remix work shows that Shifter knows that "it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing", as evident by his bumping and booming remix with Petrae Foy for the Tattoo Detectives, and his work with Carvell on Quivver's 'Dancing In Dark Rooms'.

You'll find similar themes here with 'Fat Ass', a straight up crowd-mover. Starting off with a tight kick and snare among some round, bouncing percussion, Shifter lets you know that the emphasis of this track is on the bottom end, no pun intended. He makes good use of musical phrasing, which helps build anticipation into any track meant for the dancefloor, to lead into a rolling monotone bassline intertwined with glitchy seam-popping rips that will have no problem getting the wallflowers' heads nodding. If somehow that isn't enough, the sing-song melody will taunt the rest of them out onto the dancefloor. Just beware the breakdown, they'll think someone swung a hip into the pitch control knob amidst the dancing. It lasts just long enough to make them miss the chunky groove, and like any good coda, when it kicks in, the floor will be bouncing again.

'Seven' picks up where 'Six', a spacious stomper left off. Some of the tribal elements have now donned electro-garb for the ceremony Shifter is leading, robots sitting behind drums around a fire ready to start. And start it does, robots beating out a rigid series of kicks and snares, each chanting out some metallic rite that churns the quantized clouds above, funneling them into the ground to awaken some binary beast with an ear for tech-funk. The ground shudders and growls as ominously as the bassline, then bursts open as the hulking form climbs out. Other digital demons crawl through, terrifying enough to halt the robots' rhythms momentarily before the ritual picks back up again, screeching and twisting, some glitchy otherworldly rave filled with 0s and 1s flickering out of the firelight.

For those who need something for a darker tech-type mix, 'Seven' is a solid track; the only people who will be disappointed with 'Fat Ass' are those who went in hoping for a return to the glory days of Sir Mix-A-Lot. If your dancefloor is in dire straights, consider giving it a shot of these two tracks. Kenny Shifter has the cure.