Max Graef & Glenn Astro

Max Graef from Berlin, and Glenn Astro from Essen, are individually associated with Copenhagen’s Tartelet records, and together run their own Money $ex imprint – but it’s Ninja Tune that’s snapped them up for their first album together. And it’s a trippy little cracker of a thing.

There’s a lot of early-2000s Herbert here – the unerring and uncanny melding of jazz instrumentation with micro-detailed electronics and house shuffle – but with a more rugged, hip hop cut-and-shunt feel, all turntablist licks and sampler-bashing spontaneity, and a very narcotic sense of sounds warping and melting into each other.

On occasion the constantly shifting patterns can get a bit itchy and unsettling, but for the most part it’s a joyful creation.