Scrub the web’s top layer for evidence of Tom Boogizm’s existence and you’ll be hit with anecdotal proof at
best, a roll call of locals glazing the Wigan-born DJ and producer, but little or nothing from the man himself.
And truthfully, that makes his music all the more enticing; with no digital footprint to boot us onto dry land,
we’re forced to immerse ourselves fully in the tunes. “We’re livin’ in hard times,” he repeats laggardly on
opener ‘I H T’, calling out over DIY acoustic guitar strums, and an unexpectedly florid refrain from flautist
Adam Sinclaire.
There’s nowt mannered here, but it’s not music that’s apolitical either. The music’s a warts-and-all expression
that’s purposefully scarred with incongruities that contrast its genesis in the rain-soaked Northern
streets. Boogizm’s atmospheric blues wraps itself in different colours, juxtaposing its inherent browbeaten
monochrome with strangely optimistic shades. A seasoned record collector of the best sort, he’s always been
hard to place, haphazardly swerving from busted boogie to drill, punk, noise and mutant musics of all stripes,
and he lets the boundaries fully crumble on this one. There’s the kaleidoscopic surrealism of dream pop, the
sensual humidity of flamenco and grime’s brawny audaciousness, wiping tears into blushing streaks.
He’s not alone this time, either. Cansu Kandemir lends her smoky, jazzy vocals to two tracks, almost
whispering over Boogizm’s skeletal footwork-adjacent toms and gliding squares on the brilliant ‘Not 2Nite’
and floating across the feathery ‘Senle’. On the former, Boogizm chops a crackly Mobb Deep-like piano sample
into a subtle hook, adding Vini Reilly prangs as emotional accents to Kandemir’s soft-focus coos, and on the
latter, her voice warps and blurs next to Boogizm’s dubby incidentals. “You won’t leave me alone,” deadpans
local poet and artist Ruby Conner on the dreamlike ‘n lascivious ‘Real Hardcore Pleasure’. Shadowing
Boogizm’s while wah-wah’d funk licks slobber onto the clammy, sub-heavy atmosphere. It’s only short,
but plays as the perfect foreword to the magic ‘Operation Always Be A Brave Little C*nt’, a torched modern
post-punk anthem that echoes the euphoric high points of Boogizm’s notoriously monumental DJ sets. On
album closer IGOTDRONESINMYBONES’, Boogizm stops time, calling pal Juan Camilo to deploy some Spanish
language narration over his industrial scrapes and Sinclaire’s wailed flute.
It’s a conclusion that we can’t stop rolling over in our heads, double underlining eleven giddy outsider
expositions with a single swell of nail-biting darkness that’s better than most self-consciously “experimental”
records that breeze thru these parts.[info sheet from distr.]