Rude System

The Ballistic Brothers second album from 1997 is more detailed, complex and sophisticated than their excellent debut and again, ranges from non-dancefloor mood pieces to all sorts of house-adjacent fare with plenty of influences from dub, soundtracks, jazz, funk and indeed jazz funk. It’s dated well, with lengthy tracks that take their time to unfurl and develop, and which again like its predecessor, uses the audio language of dance music and samples from (mostly) black music history to create a rich home listening experience. Rude System is experimental, confident and happy enough for many of its tracks to defy straight-up genre definitions.