Overtone Japan Vinyl & CDs

Review: A strikingly unique dance music project from Nagasaki producer, DJ and sound director Keisuke Yamazoe, Aflex Combo has always been an impressive project, straddling several EPs stretching back to 2002 - and all centring, in the artist's own words, on "heavy funk beats and obscure jazz and Latin samples", albeit with the aid of live musicians. The intermingling of live-recorded and sampled material is always an exciting prospect, often to the extent that we can't tell the difference. Indeed, on this latest reissue of the artist's first ever track - the 2002 cut 'Dazzling' and the formerly unheard 'Etsom Ne' - we recall two janky, blissful jazzdance cuts, splayed across two spray-tanned sides. The former track hears bowing basses and trilling pianos whirl around the mix, as if lost in a nostalgic Millennium-bugged miasma; the latter is much more muted, its most striking elements being its boxy drum machine and expert flute line, betraying a well-integrated highlife influence.