Turinn 18 1/2 Minute Gaps

Outta the shadows and into the strobe-light, Turinn’s Modern Love debut is almost 5 years old at this point, a highly rinsable set of sawn-off brukbeats and anxious, nerve-riding productions that triggered a rush of energy into the Manchester undergrowth, sprouting inventive, off-grid, highly original productions form the likes of Michael J Blood, Rat Heart and FUMU in its wake. If yr into owt from Stringray to EL-B, Shake to A Guy Called Gerald, you really should cop this.
Crooked and rugged AF, but tempered by an acute emotive sensitivity, 18 1/2 Minute Gaps renders a bleedin’ cross-section of effortlessly all-over-the-place workouts in a breathless, deceptively freehand fashion that comes riddled with an electric blue energy all of its own. Committing ten trax of fractious, mutant funk and sore vibes, it was originally intended as a compilation of Turinn’s formative productions before his phase II works could see the light of day, but is so far the only material he’s released - bar a few bits for the YOUTH label.
Like a lead lid on a nuclear rave implosion; the set here traps original ‘ardcore ‘nuum, hyper booty and dank post-punk elements in a perpetual flux of in-the-pocket grooves which ravenously attempt to split at the seams, alternately pushing into Muslimgauze-like buffer zones of distortion or resoundingly wide ambient dimensions, and often both at once.
On the first plate, there’s a rare surge of quick/slow torque in Ovum, and then in his nod to the Italian new wave with Elba, which seems to find the square root between Lorenzo Senni and a classic Claude Young grind, whereas the bittersweet soul of 1625 finds compatible links with his longtime mate Willow and Japan’s Shinichi Atobe, while Parratactico swaggers into quantum, slowed down and syrupy dancehall meters.
The second disc is no less delirious: the title track runs at a furious Detroit tempo like DJ Stingray flipping Carl Craig’s Kaotic Harmonies, before ESO cuts in like a super cranky El-B wearing itchy Primark underwear, and the bone-rattling hardcore jungle of Spawn soon enough gives way to the sweaty couplet of Petrichor and Ondine, where his elusive, distressed touch shines thru.