The Moody Boyz – Slave to Technology EP

“Those who know” will know that the return of the Moody Boyz is pretty significant. Tony Thorpe (for Moody Boyz is in fact just him) deserves the title of living legend more than most: the South Londoner has been at the heart of the most interesting developments in underground music for over three decades now, yet never lost his freshness or enthusiasm for the new. From the postpunk days, when his band 400 Blows slammed together funk, dub, disco and DIY attitude, he’s continued experimenting through the acid house days, through connections with the Boys Own crew, The KLF (he manned the mixing desk for their biggest records) and William Orbit (on whose Guerilla label the Moody Boyz album ‘Product of the Environment’ came out), right through to the (post)dubstep era where his Studio Rockers label and his own remixes for the likes of Amy Winehouse, Erykah Badu and VV Brown kept bassbins shaking as intensely as ever.

It’s been X years since an actual Moody Boyz record, though, so this new EP is something very special. And doubly so because it sees Tony teaming up with fellow Croydon talent Janset – a seriously under-appreciated MC talent of the new generation. Whether as part of the wildly experimental dubstep duo Stinkahbell or, more recently, solo, Janset’s style has been based on a unique combination of intense rave hype (to witness her in a rave as a host for the likes of Swindle and others of the dubstep world is to be reminded of the sheer thrilling power of the human voice) and philosophical lyrical introspection. Her musing on the dissolution of soul and personality into the technological networks that rule our lives is the perfect addition for Tony’s mind-frazzlingly high-tech production on ‘Slave 2 Technology’, which combines drum’n’bass, electro, hints of footworking and blissed-out electronica yet manages to sound entirely coherent and is – like all the best Moody Boyz work over the decades – a straight-up dancefloor bomb. The remix and bonus tracks juggle all of these elements and more into even stranger, but still body-rocking, forms, proving that the return of this underground legend was more than worth waiting for.