Part 2 of the Howie B hagiography… Part 1 is here.
I don’t know what it is about albums from folks who are primarily producers, but goddamn they’re good. And that’s not a genre restricted statement either, just look at the likes of Steve Albini, in fact the whole of Shellac… but I digress.
This is the second of my career-spanning Howie B mixes, mostly focused on his albums Music For Babies, Turn The Dark Off, Folk and Snatch, but with plenty of remixes and obscurities thrown in to keep it interesting. You may notice, I really like his albums!
Balancing the 4 albums was really interesting as I hadn’t noticed how much they each had their own character. Music For Babies is a very warm, ambient affair with some glitchiness thrown in as is his style. Whereas Turn The Dark Off is a pretty straight-forward instrumental hip hop and trip hop album. This will sound fantastically stupid, but it was only going back to Folk for this mix that I realised how ‘indie’ it was. It’s a lot closer to Maxinquaye / Nearly God by Tricky and cohort, than anything else by Howie B. And Snatch feels like the slightly lost child, not quite sure where to position itself among these others, and ending up as a more experimental, genre-bending step on from Turn The Dark Off.
Anyhoo, imagine what all that sounds like inexpertly shmushed together. Or actually don’t – listen to the Music for Howie B-B-Babies mix!
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