Shango: "The One"

Jackpot Records were the shit. If you ever needed to make inroads into nineties’ club culture but lacked the free drugs and cycle top, all you had to do was brandish one of their twelve-inches and the promoter would drop to his knees. The Black Project bunker of progressive house, they were shadowed by names like Carl Cox, John Digweed, Sasha and BT. Paul van Dyk had his hand in. Blue Amazon too.

So whatever happened to the Likely Lads? Well, Blue Amazon split in half and then came back with a bang, like a small bomb going off. Now Shango (aka Rob Green) is hot on their echo, along for a Jackpot Reunion package offered by Convert Recordings. Having disappeared somewhere after the Bodyrock EP, he’s back with a number called “The One” which, you’ll be pleased to hear, has naff-all to do with the really shit Jet Li film that bombed over seven years ago. Whatever the title lacks in imagination is compensated by the meat of the track: a pneumatic glide and smooth hoovers, as cool as a perfect round of pinball. The melody is delicate but up there, second fiddle to the cruise control beat that carries you like only rafts and Ecstasy can do, and for six minutes it exudes an invisible tension, oddly akin to driving. Someone’s been studying the streets of Berlin, methinks, and the secret techno nights that unfurl in hijacked former surgeries. It does succumb to the old tradition of a trance fade by layers (log on—it’s all about the instant death these days), but at least that way it’s tailor-made for whatever Shango returns with next. Which, knowing him, will be a raw hunk of dubstep sometime in 2030. See you there.