The new project from Atjazz, Replife & Si Tew, Soul Evidence does what it says on the tin, Wonky Hip Hop soul Soul!

rooks, the boy wonder of his day, is still only ‘in his twenties’. He’s been musically pretty quiet following his two artist albums; You, Me & Us (the happy one about dance music and partying, but with a dark underbelly), and Red Tape (the one with ‘dark’ writ large, and that’s laced with anger about life’s less savoury turns). Mantis however did release ‘Pre’ last year; a track laid down as a tribute to a certain Chicago label, and we now release, as an obvious continuation of that theme, another Windy City influenced track. ‘RLF’, as some of you might guess from the title, is going to appeal to a harder dancefloor. A driving wall of energy leads to the break, and a vitriolic and frankly weird answer machine message, followed by a raging ride to the run out groove.

The flipside gives us the ‘Eur Dub’, a slightly less rampant, but nonetheless intense trip, a bit like rafting the river post storm.If your audience are ‘in the zone’ then ‘RLF’ might well be the track to drop.. if you share Andrew James Brooks’ occasional need for intensity, then you’ll probably get equally twisted pleasure in exposing a ‘chillout’ crowd to these tracks.

His trademark analogue jerk-beat first pricked up ears over a decade ago via remixes for labels Mantis Recordings and Bob Sinclar’s Yellow Productions. Clyde now finally drops his debut album Hyper Reality.

Clyde teamed up with San Francisco based Capitol A (The Roots, King Britt, Jazzanova, Wahoo, Mark de Clive-Lowe etc etc..) for Serve It Up, a single that, probably, set the revival of the revival of Hip-house in motion. It’s here in all its original glory as the album opener. Cap’ lays down the lyrics twice more on the album with the swaggering Broken Slang, and on Gedaroom he tells further tales of, and for want of a better term, a night on the pull. MOBO winning emcee Phoebe One speaks up for London, not only bouncing back on Gedaroom, but delivering one of her finest ever tracks with the rugged Neva That. Nebraska is probably never going to be a state at the forefront of hip-hop culture, but it’s keyed a scratch on the door of the Escalade with Clyde’s discovery of Omaha’s Juse, in whom he’s found a suitably cynical cohort. Million Souls Sold gives a clue in the title to its content, while Lady Cadava is possibly the oddest centrepiece to an album since Kool Keith had a particularly strange day.

It’s not all rhyming and reasoning though. Jane Hamilton (Magic Number, Slope) delivers some sweet boogie soul with her vocals on Read My Mind, and Clyde himself doesn’t shy away from vocal duties on the album. though he claims currently it’s strictly from within the four walls of the studio, as he’s not yet mastered the art of being drunk enough to sing in front of an audience, yet sober enough to be any good at it! Whatever he thinks, he does a pretty good job in front of a less public mic with a clutch of slow jams for the ladies and on current favourite in swinging mainland Europe, and Manchester Roll Of The Beast.

Hyper Reality, a labour of long term obsession at a (political) correctional facility disco.