MIC Vinyl & CDs

Review: All hail brand new label MIC (Music Inspires Change), launching with five never-before-heard jams from cult 80s fusionist and groove buccaneer Mike Collins, the jazz funk pro magician who was responsible for a number of iconic hits in the 80s. Behind-the-scenes he was also flexing serious synth muscles, setting the foundation for the house explosion that happened by the end of the decade. From the b-boy finesse of "Phat Back Beats" to the jazzier wriggles and flare of "Halfway House" by way of the cosmic bossa of "Latino Beats", each track was way ahead of its time and continues to have resonance to this day.

Review: Last year, we got a bit giddy with excitement over MIC's first two releases, which presented lost music from a 1980s drum machine enthusiast and a swathe of new cuts from Glaswegian cold-wave oddballs LAPS. The label's first missive of 2018 comes from rising star Lord Tusk and is every bit as good as its predecessors. Taken as a whole, it's rather hard to pigeonhole, featuring as it does tracks that variously fuse together sounds variously associated with post-punk dub, weirdo deep house, turn of the '90s London dub house (check the brilliant "Don't Be Shy"), the Art of Noise ("Beyond Limitation") and the dream house/dusty breakbeat fusions we've come to expect from Project Pablo and Jayda G ("Champion Lovers"). Throughout, it remains spaced-out, fuzzy and eccentric.