Various – Pack Mentality EP review

The Wolf Music stable – or should we say pack – has accrued a style and substance that belies its fledgling status: Iljia Rudman, Cottam and Session Victim have all adorned previous 12 inches from the UK imprint. The Pack Mentality sampler 12″, despite ostensibly lacking a big name producer, is their strongest release yet, with an unapologetic focus on cosy disco-house.

The A Side features a track that would have featured prominently in our Best Of 2010 coverage had we not slept on it: Fantastic Man’s “Look This Way”. Purportedly a pseudonym for an established Australian producer, the heavily filtered, Eryka Badhu sampling house jam is the stand out track here. The expertly chopped vocal drops in and out like characters in a soap opera, as a broken house beat stutters into life. Sharing the A Side is “Make Love” by Brothers Rice; heavy on the strings and analogue chug, it’s a decidedly more disco affair and complements its partner nicely.

Flip over for an outing from Revenge cohort OOFT; “Just Peachy” seriously challenges the Fantastic Man in terms of sheer quality, although it adopts a more linear approach with looped vocals slowly entering the equation. By the time you reach KRL’s “Machine Code” you might be forgiven to expect a slice of filler to round off the sampler; no sir – a deep bassline, gurgling vocals and demented piano line marks it as one for the sweaty basements.

Aaron Coultate