Somewhere Decent to Live

For two young Black men from Manchester to adopt a white German and American adaptation of a Jamaican form — the dub-techno of Basic Channel, Echospace, Porter Ricks and co — was a smart and funny way to launch themselves into the world. But it was also an act of supreme confidence, because this is among the best work in the form. Slow, low, relishing every nano-detail and heartbeat bassline, and adding mysterious looped voices that hinted forward to their later vocal collages, Space Afrika made the sound completely their own. Of course they would launch from this into a much more ambitious breadth of sound over subsequent releases, but that shouldn’t obscure how potent and perfectly formed this release was in its own right.