(Hussle / EMI)

Unfortunately, poor health kept me from Craig Obey’s recent visit to Adelaide for Shabooka Shake. Having now heard this Sydneysider’s EP, ‘Eat My Beat (It’s Summer), I’m kicking myself. Craig Obey’s tunes are loaded with tight and funky electro authenticity... and if this is just a taste of his forthcoming LP ‘Elektric Force’, I’m ready for the four-course meal.

The opening track ‘Feet’ wastes no time (true of the whole EP) getting straight into the groove. The arrangement features several layers of glorious 80’s electro inspired synths that push boldly through the mix, while a funky bass line gets the hips shaking. ’Eat my Beat’ has a far more laid back feel, and lower BPM. Like the former track, it’s very musical, with a colourful bass line, and sparse bursts of light synths. A stuttering and heavily processed vocal sample carries the track, which skips and shuffles its way through several minutes. Melodic duties are taken on by a synth again, producing music of a looped nature that doesn’t tire through it’s simple and whimsical progressions. It’s funky stuff, and the material that Kumfy Klub in Adelaide was built on reaching back to the late nineties.

‘Fun (The Flute Song)’ evokes memories of early Gerling or The Avalanches, with it’s repeated lyric ‘how much fun we can have together?’ The kick drum is four on the floor, the tempo is cruisey and a combination of strings, flute and pads create a sense of floating in musical heavens. Craig’s signature synth elements take a bit of a backseat to the samples here, but they still sneak into the mid section with staccato stutters, and passing square-wave melodic lines.

The closing track ‘Know What I Mean’ is a lazy, spacious breakbeat that drops pulsing synths and layered electro all over it. A distant and heavily processed female vocal sample repeats, adding to the tracks’s ethereal feel, before another synth presents itself as a harmonized violin substitute. The ambience of this track is particularly immersive, and leaves me wanting to hear more from Mr Obey’s musical mind. This EP is synthetic goodness for anyone who isn’t afraid to proclaim their love for 80’s synthesizers the re-emerging electro movement at large.