The Search Engine by DJ Food

Label : Ninja Tune
Rating : 9/10
Written by : Kris Needs

In 1990, Coldcut duo Matt Black and Jonathan Moore turned the beats and samples ethos which had placed them at the forefront of the UK’s post-acid house scene, into the Ninja Tune label. DJ Food was initially created then to feed DJs with handy breaks, gradually evolving to solidify around label designer Strictly Kev and also his essential Jazz Brakes series, whilst also remaining an unofficial member of the legendary Beats and Pieces duo.
 
And so onto the first DJ Food album since 2000’s Kaleidoscope – and what’s found is astonishingly different from those early Jazz Brakes sets, created out of three EPs as ‘a psychedelic rock album made with samplers’ – on further inspection, with its underlying themes of an ever changing social world that revolves around the quest and search for the next thing to satisfy our hunger and its consistent themes around science fiction, it stands as a concept work as the tracks spill into each other via dialogue and dark fanfares.  Dark, in your grill and at times bone-crushingly distorted and heavy going on the ears, this is possibly Kev’s most stripped back, contextual and frighteningly observant work to date.
 
With subject matter revolving around spacemen and robots, it sometimes recalls the churning density of mid-period Orb, with guest appearances including Jim ‘Foetus’ Thirlwell and Matt ‘The The’ Johnson offering his pop-twinged, dulcet tones on GIANT, offering his pop-twinged, dulcet tones atop of jazzy, low slung bass and reverb-soaked echoes. It appears alongside further musical contributions from solid steel cohort Dr Rubberfunk, as does DK on the chugging, break-beat laced Sentinel (which drops into a juggernaut of a punk track, inducing head banging and body popping in equal measure). Second Class Citizen guest on the 11 -minute sample-fest Magpie Music. Magpie Music is again Beats & Pieces homage, deconstructing a sample swap into this colossal masterpiece which draws the worlds of psych and instrumental hip hop closer together than ever before, spun through the bi-focal lense of Strictly Kev.
 
Evocative, still groovalicious and the right side of audacious in its concept, it’s a startling coming of age for sample-based music – even better still, it comes in several formats, including limited comic book-sized edition with cover art by 2000 AD’s Henry Flint. Eleven years since the last full length, this album goes a long way in justifying the gap left by Food over the last decade - it's a marvelous and well thought out album that's constant nuances and sheer depth recall repeated listens.