It’s official. I’m old. I’ve become one of those people that says, “I remember when blah blah was doing blah blah”. Well, so what. I do remember when Hook n Sling was making (and playing) breaks. It wasn’t too long ago. After pushing the boundaries of breaks and electro with his crossover Sarah McLeod bootleg, winning audiences worldwide and attracting the attention of the immensely popular Renaissance label, Hook n Sling looks set to continue to push the genre-defying envelope once again with the Plastic Wrap EP. Moving away from breaks and electro altogether, the title track Plastic Wrap is classic Hussle house; totally dancefloor ready, yet seeming to challenge the concept of traditional house music blending minimal melodies, big room breakdowns and odd-yet-well-placed wavy trance rhythms. The whole thing sounds like a bad combination in the vein of steak and mayonnaise, but it actually works more like peanut butter and chocolate. Tasty.

The remaining tracks step well off the dancefloor (at least prime time anyway) and into slightly darker territory, best suited to late at night or for iPod fodder. Hooked Up remains largely forgettable, but this is largely to do the fact that nothing about it becomes memorable, even after a few solid listens; whereas Green on the other hand, remaining on the short side of things at 3:27 seconds, is a groovy little downtempo ditty with a solid repetitive rhythm that demands the kind of strut that you can only achieve when listening to such a track on your iPod on the way to work.

While the Plastic Wrap EP is definitely a step in a different direction for Mr. Maniscalco, I still think it’s a step in the right direction and one of the better releases around at the moment. And besides, if you keep doing the same boring shit all the time it becomes well… boring.