WERKHA – City Shuffle EP
aaamusic | On 20, Apr 2016
Tom A. Leah, an eclectic participant in discipline and style when working under the name Werkha, released his debut LP, Colours Of A Red Brick Raft LP last June. Next week, he’ll be back with a follow-up EP titled City Shuffle…
After multiple successful collaborations on Colours…, Bryony Jarman-Pinto is again gracing Werkha’s world with her stylings on ‘City Shuffle’, which has become a fan favourite and staple of the live show with good reason. The thick-bodied chords brushed on the guitar in those first moments, crystal clear in tonation, find themselves a firm grip on the listener’s ears, using negative space with pleasing contrast to the positive. This goes for a couple of rounds, allowing it to really go in and make the entrance of drums and Bryony all the more grabbing.
The electronic bass synth, multiple harmonies and further percussive injections uplift the vibe and every sound feels strong in its presence. The hard-line groove defies any more ethereal approaches to filling up the space but still doesn’t miss out on filling the mix with a heady romp which is all instantly cut away at track’s end.
DVA delivers the first remix, this being ‘The Invincible’ featuring Alex Rita. He opts for a house/techno mash imagined re-work, sprinkled with sound effects that sound like they were cherry picked from the worlds of psytrance, trap, dub à la Hypnotized and maybe a bit of deep house. A highlight comes from a drop about a minute in: it hits with a vacancy, you can almost feel it sucking the air from within your ears.
Tom Blip is up next with his mix of ‘Falling Through The Wall’. Springy and sprightly it is; pure and brightly it feels. It feels as if the curtains shading the previous tracks glide open to let in the sunshine as the plucked sounds of a koto jump in, soon joined in it’s melodious gambol by a slowly modulating synth. Some phased keys and panned taps of hi-hats and rides introduce the final remix by Contours, who manages to fill his rework with all sorts of nicks, kinks and ticking. The trickling percussion tickles the minimal arrangement of bass and various keys along with the chopped up samples of those previously mentioned hi-hat and cymbal ticks.
All in all, the four tracks make for an EP that says a lot in a short time and makes for an enjoyable look into the scene of Werkha and does enough to keep the flame of Colours Of A Red Brick Raft alive until his next full length visit.
