Shir Khan : 'Exploited'
Released: 14th September 2009
Label: Exploited Records
Here label boss Shir Khan takes us on an hour and fifteen-minute journey through a variety of different styles of electronic and house music. Opening with abstract, dubstep-esque, 'electronics of Milanese' and melding it into the futurisms of a Modeselektor remix of Siriusmo.
Swiftly we move into more funky territory with Lorenz Rhodes bringing groovy, disco infused sounds, particularly on the wonderfully titled “Kinky And The Grain”. Shir Khan intervenes swiftly with his own “Boing Bum Shorty”, a dancehall inspired piece that fades into Jan Driver’s quirky electro stylings.
From here we enter a nice section of, occasionally funk and disco, influenced electro including more of Lorenz Rhodes, Adam Sky, Le Le and Mercury before a blissful Malente remix leads into a mash of Crookers, Yuksek and Oliver $ and suddenly we’re into serious house territory. Leading into Oliver $’s RQM remix, we are taken into a short education of full on house with elements of tribal and minimal floating of the periphery. From Solo to Minimow via Zombie Disco Squad this is probably the highlight of the disk, some of the floaty Minimow pieces are prime examples of this.
The close of the mix takes of with a wonderful Cobblestone Jazz piece, mixing jazzy drums and rhythms with house samples and 4/4s while is a deep and quirky piece with a very quaint percussive rhythm indeed and leads into the lusciously melodic, off-key and brilliant “Strange Fruit” from London’s Zomby before being led to a close by another Siriusmo track, this time all ambience and simmering melodies.
Overall, a good solid mixtape, if a slightly mixed bag. I almost feel as though it has almost been designed to be a microcosm of a night out, with the more light hearted fun stuff opening up to get you into the mood before leading into club vibes and closing off with some wonderful late night ambience. However, trying to cram a night out into just over an hour was always going to be a difficult task and, while Shir Khan pulls it off with aplomb in places, there are times when it doesn’t always flow and some tracks feel as though they have been slightly crowbarred in to aid rapid tempo changes and such. All said and done though, this would be a great record to stick on, get your friends over and prepare for a night out East.
Words: James Hoste
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