Album Review: Africa Hitech - Hitecherous

For all its right moves, Warp Records seems to be growing uncomfortable with its age. Having turned 21 this year, and existing as a record label at all in an era of downloads, torrents and self-publishing, there’s pressure to still be relevant. But try too hard and it comes over like a portly, balding, middle-aged dude desperately attempting to pour himself into a pair of skinny jeans.

If their roster of recent years has seen a drift away from the original ideals – you could also argue diversify – the standard has at least largely remained high. But for all their snapping at the heels of the future, you can forgive them the odd whimsical glance back over their shoulder. This second Africa Hitech release sounds like one of those.

The side project of knob-twiddlers Steve Spacek and Mark Pritchard (not to be confused with the Conservative MP for the Wrekin constituency in the Cotswolds, unless he’s also dabbling in the world of leftfield electronica), Hitecherous probably once sounded unearthly. The sparse squelches, heavy blips and falsetto mantra of ‘How Does It Make U Feel’ would’ve been shit-scary enough to start a Daily Mail campaign against it had it been release prior to maybe 1996. In these more tolerant times, and possibly owing to the public reaction to that whole nasty Jan Moir business and their need to sell their shit paper, the harbinger of doom is instead happily reporting that one in three albatrosses is a lesbian.

Built up around bubbly 303-aping software rather than a solid piece of kit, it draws on a rich history of electronic music, but is supple and writhe enough not to get too bogged down. It wants to be taken seriously. Trouble is that grimy faux-Afro Caribbean estate chatter littering Hitecherous no longer sounds that cutting edge – I’ve caught my girlfriend’s five-year-old nephew saying, “And ting, you get me”. Tough times to be too bleeding cool for school.

Weirdly though, a major criticism levied on early Warp releases was that in creating an “intelligent” electronica record, that listeners plug into not on a dancefloor but in the comfort of their own home, it was already distanced from the visceral, hedonistic energy of its origin. Here, the whole argument loops back round on itself with Africa Hitech’s EP, which treads closer to the manifesto around the genesis of the imprint but sounds out-of-place when the audience isn’t a massive group of sweaty revellers, their bodies shaking to the whims of an intimidating soundsystem.