Album Review: Record Producer - The Way

“I wanna know, how's everybody feelin?” opens The Way, sampling 7A3's classic Goes Like Dis. It's an audacious and funky opening to an album that, largely, manages to live up to this promise. Secretive Melbourne outfit Record Producer begin their debut album with Salamander, a sampledelica track reminiscent of Odelay-era Beck, with massive beats melding with record pops and cracks behind psychedelic tones and sounds of unknown origin. There's no way to not be excited.

The rest of the album grooves about Girl Talk-style mash-ups, such as Don't Stop, where sampled vocal passages fight with female chorus chants and stolen beats, and more traditional trip hop like Demons Out which recalls, amazingly, some of DJ Shadow's earlier work. The classic Amen Break appears throughout the album, and for sample junkies, the beat harkens back to the history of the music – adding context to the sounds. Title track The Way samples an orchestra introduction record, with booming big beat rhythms that break and pause, allowing the vocally introduced brass, woodwind and string sections to punch the soundscape. It's a real highlight.

Like nearly every sample-driven record from the last 15 years, it occasionally does sound a little Avalanches/DJ Shadow derivative, but for the most part this incredibly crisp and well-produced record straddles the line between dance beats and 'intellectual' trip hop with originality and aplomb.

The ever-enigmatic group justify the five-year-long gestation by saying, “At least we took less time than The Avalanches”. This self-consciously cocky attitude sums up the record – it's brilliant, it's fun, it's playfully arrogant and even if it does err a little close to what we know, there's little arguing against a groove this strong.