- The immensely appealing sound of Manchester's Prime Numbers effortlessly mixes in lush, plasticine funk with classic deep house grooves. It sounds pretty much what you'd expect a label run by Trus'me to sound like, with an emphasis on the quirky and unusual. Discreet Unit's first proper EP on the label pushes the "funk" aspect to the limit, two eight-minute scorchers cut out from expansive live jams; as the duo themselves put it, "electronic live adventures worthy of putting to wax."
Congealing from smoky club haze, "Shake Your Body Down" quickly catches fire as its main riff peeks around the corner, remnants of the smoke tickling sweet nothings in your ears. It's not the quick-spreading kind of flame that ravenously consumes, but rather a slow-burning element rising from underneath the track. It simmers and crackles, titular chants breaking out as the song rolls to a boil and that riff finally emerges in all its glory. It's a warm, dulcet sound that evokes an entire history of house music, as likely to induce introspective pondering as it is dancing. It comes from a different place entirely, but I can't help but compare it to Tensnake's "Coma Cat" from earlier this year—it's the same sort of impossibly catchy, rapturously invigorating progression, only filtered through classic house instead of disco.
Poor "Twilight" on the b-side has a lot to live up to, and it sounds like a b-side in the old rockist tradition; darker, weirder, less approachable. It coasts on a linear drum machine that immediately paints the track as less invitingly human than "Shake," and it utilizes jagged low-end undulation instead of the blissful restraint of its counterpart. Think something like Stefan Goldmann's "The Maze," only less punk and more prog. Still, the vintage percussion is that magical mix of warm and robotic, and the song's repetition—underpinned by decaying, filtered strings—is at the least hypnotic. Nostalgia may be reaching a fever pitch in 2010, but Prime Numbers have lit the flames anew with yet another of their alchemical miracles.
Tracklist A Shake Your Body Down
B Twilight