Elmore Judd & Bullion Petrol Laughs

Elmore Judd’s music is a heady mix of art-funk, soul, hip-hop and pop, compounded by African dance and folk, rembetica and vintage horror soundtracks. The North London trio’s last album for Honest Jon’s — Insect Funk — was acclaimed in the national press as ‘deliriously inventive and macabre lo-fi soul music played with infectious glee’ (The Independent).

Its four contributions here elaborate the same engrossing mix of musical sensibilities. "Petrol Laughs" is an out-pop adventure, musically bumptious but psychologically uneasy; Wires 2 is bubbling, buzzing and soulful. Golden Goat is a cold-sweat take on the Snakefinger classic; Synth Grub a dubwise head-nodder, layered with bleeping, humming ambience.

Bullion is the next-door-neighbour of the Honest Jon’s shop, in Ladbroke Grove, West London, and frequent close collaborator of Jesse Hackett, from Judd. A world away from the sample-based sound of his early releases, here are two of his most potent and accomplished efforts to date, steeped in a kind of replicant eighties-groove: the worked, stop-start DevoEsk features his bold new vocal manner, steel-blue-eyed amongst the synths, machine-funk claps and metal percussion; whilst his Synth Grub version is more moody,
linear, low-slung.