Crooked Machine…

When is your artistic endeavor finished? After the 102nd iteration, can you declare it ready to ship? I dunno, really you could work on something forever and not be satisfied; or not achieve the point of perfection you had envisioned upon that first spark. Something can always be moved around, said differently, played in another key, or looked at through an entirely different lens than you initially viewed it through. Last year’s triumph still holds endless potential. All it needs is to be reimagined and then rebranded.

Soulwax took their 2004 rock meets groove explosion Any Minute Now and let it spin around for a year before they reinterpreted it as Nite Versions. Where the former involved plugging guitars into amps and turning the dial to 11, the latter was meant for the club with its dirty, loud electro. Both excellent releases with their own unique sound and objectives. Roisin Murphy stepped into the laser heavy disco club last year with DJ Parrot, AKA Crooked Man, to create one of last year’s most heavily played records with Roisin Machine. Safe sounds, hypnotic grooves, a propellant for my day with its heavy house bounce. Everything about this infectious sound was what I ask of a dance record. But perhaps this album was only the beginning, the man behind the boards takes the original blueprint of this record and reimagines it as Crooked Machine.

Crooked Man takes the record opener “Simulation” and runs it through a breezy pulsating processor to create “Assimilation”. Maybe a remix of the original, maybe what was intended to begin the album. Regardless, this soon to be released record has Roisin stating about her collaborator and his latest output, “I left him and Fat Dave to their own devices on this and they have outdone themselves! I absolutely love it!! I think I prefer it to the original album, slightly less me and all the more ‘cool’ for it!”