Rival Consoles: "Func"

Remember 1999? Of course you do. You were a teenager, you couldn’t breathe without ingesting a Will Smith film, and everyone thought their computers were going to die. Yeah, that 1999. Anyway, cast your mind back to March: aside from someone unleashing the Melissa worm and the war against Slobodan Milošević, the talk of the town was Flat Eric—a saffron Fraggle and bass hustler who hijacked the charts for a month. It seemed the world (the world in Britain, I mean) couldn’t get enough of the planet’s funniest animal, everyone pimping the fuck out of their cars to mirror the cheap throb and slick! factor. If Real Audio ringtones had been a commodity back then, “Flat Beat” would’ve been the scourge of the workplace. Nothing surer.

I can tell you exactly where Rival Consoles was in March 1999: propping up a sixth-form common room, paying close attention to the rhythm of old Flatso. Of course, back then Mr Consoles was still known an Ryan Lee West, and no one would have thought he’d end up converting the tune to a shot at dub heaven ten years later. So, going by today’s calendar, the Lazarus of Leicester has at last delivered his masterpiece with the brutal sloth of “Func,” the Flat Eric influence buried and built on with garage cackle, 8-bit sweeteners, choral glow and a grey kind of lewd loveliness. A crucial sixth of the latest from the house of Erased Tapes, it’s deep and dark like a half-filled mineshaft but still as pepped and cheeky as a chimney-sweep. Tempo: check. Beatz: check. Threat to speakers: check. Threat to car chassis: check. If you’re after a fully-restored taste of the past that’s ready to take on the future, this’ll do you some serious good, trust me.