Str8 Crooked

Three dazzling re-routings of Detroit machine funk -- Moodymann in particular -- into deep mid-Atlantic cominglings with raw, old-school hip-hop and house. "Str8 Crooked" is clattering, chugging jack, holding something like Paisley soul under the water; "Build Back Better Sweatshops" is more driving, riven with breakdowns and horror-show vocal samples. With an up-tempo downbeat which nonetheless sounds like a tolling bell, the epic, immersive, sixteen-minutes-plus "Episcopi Vagantes" pulls off the deadly combination of a kind of stifled, timeworn, melodic wistfulness and percussively restless, passing-through urgency. This is killer dance music, run through with swinging bass and ruff b-boy drum-machine rhythms: encrusted and detailed, mangled and nervy, but intensely hard-grooving; wired with punk insouciance, edginess, and free spirit.