KLUTE Vinyl & CDs

Review: Neo-rave underdog Klute returns to Okbron Records for an incredible new white label, 'Peace & Love / Feel The Fire', bottling the essence of breakbeat hardcore just in the way it was best pulled off in the 90s and 00s. Nay, few traces remain of this record's making in the contemporary 20s; since both of these tracks have been laid to vinyl only, they bear that distinctive toppy scratchiness to which only a certain contingent of retroistic rave tunes can lay claim. But whether they were made now or then is really no matter, since both tracks are sublime objet d'arts in their own rights: 'Peace & Love' is the ambient lilter laid to breaks, sounding like a braindance-era chillout room number set to a counter-intuitively, corrosively party-crashing breakbeat judder, and 'Feel The Fire' is comparatively undersea, bringing to the music those muted bass licks and occipital-frontal synth reliefs all too known to that rare subsection of breaks known as dolphin jungle.

Review: Since releasing his debut single in 1994, Tom Withers AKA Klute has been one of the most prolific and reliable artists in drum and bass, releasing well over half a century of single releases in the process. "Whatever It Takes" is his ninth LP in total and lands 21 years after his first. There's much to enjoy throughout, with the Ipswich-based artist giddily skipping between elastic, funk-fuelled workouts, soaring liquid anthems, marginally darker and moodier fare, acid-fired rollers and, as the album progresses, tech-house and techno-influenced four-to-the-floor cuts. Throw in a handful of melodious, IDM-flecked downtempo numbers and you have an ear-pleasing set of expertly produced electronic gems.