FAMILY The Electric Chair: Basement Soul Music;A Detonation By The Unabombers

Amazon.co.uk Manchester's Electric Chair club night has been running for six years, inviting the likes of Freddy Fresh, Jazzanova and Derrick May to man the decks. Described as a "detonation by the Unabombers", this two-CD set couples their relentless mix with a bonus disc of pollution-free originals. The Unabombers are Luke Cowdrey and Justin Crawford (going out as Only Child on Grand Central Records), their chosen genre defined as Northern Sulphuric Soul. This means that they trace the slinky bass trail back to 1970s War, Chic and Hamilton Bohannon, through the 1980s with Oliver Cheatham and Cultural Vibe, then right up to addictive 1990s classics such as LadyCop's "To Be Real" the Capoeira Twins' version of the Miles Davis "Four" tune. Disc 1 is a triumph of pumping breaks and lip-blubbering basslines, moving with dangerous purpose between the mainline soulfulness of Frank De Jo Jo to the riled-up rapping and ragga-spewing of 2xFreestyle and Rawcotiks, everything crumpled and curtailed, concise and condensed. After comparing this mix with the full-length sources, we can confirm that the Unabombers have snapped up only the parts of each cut that really matter, stoking them into a compulsively twitching funkathon. --Martin Longley