DJ Alex Corton – Vinyl Reviews

Good Looking Records

Nookie – In @ The Deep End

2001

Plate 2: Side C / D

Plate 3: Side E / F

For today, we finish 2/3 of the discs on ‘In @ The Deep End’ with four more terrific tunes from Nookie. I wanted to complete this album and leave Friday with a one day review on the only CD album from an artist, that didn’t get pressed on vinyl. I don’t normally review CDs but I feel most obliged with this one. 

    Without further ado…Nookie.

   ‘Pushing The Vibe’ features DRS who at this time was a regular Good Looking fixture in the artist and tour collective. MC Conrad, rest his soul, had been selective in needing a fellow MC in the entourage and it was Delroy, DRS’s talents that complimented and worked with not only Conrad, but the vibe of the time. Nookie snakes another work of funk laced jazz over the lawn and around the fringes, nurturing this organic sculpture of sound onto another blueprint of his work. Again, the riff of the bass sets off the bells and whistles, driving a groove that pierces the mind like an ecstasy laced pin cushion. Live, colorful, gifting us with a jam session that could only be from Nookie. 

   Side D has the tune that for me is the best one on this album. This track ‘Innerspace’ sends us signals from the dimensions of past and future, sandwiched in the folds of space that we have not yet understood. Sacred voids between everything we know and the vast emptiness of nothing. The blips signal a pulse of grounding to hold onto, but it’s the build of this cataclysmic track which clinches the edges of the known and unknown while pads flood in, the beats roll and the music spins in a direction that only means it’s heading beyond our reasoning. Nookie sets this flight path with a simple task of transforming our emotional capabilities and we get something so advanced in thought, we might reach it in a thousand light years. A mind blowing experience that will always hit me in ways that liquify everything around it. ‘Innerspace’ is just  as sick as fuck! 

     Decompressing…one two, one two..that tune..every-time. I feel like my legs are shaky after that journey. Last plate is up now. 

   Side E is ‘Dimension Of Sound’ slamming  drum funk intro out and reverberating those fundamental key stabs. The bass drum taps subtly, then the high hats pick up the pace. Once the foundation of that free rolling percussion is set, it’s back to another funk fueled bass guitar to jive with. Nookie kicked up the heat with this one in a spellbinding fashion. The pads seep through with grace and fluidity, rounding off a real taste of that Nookie glaze. Check the warbling trumpet blast in this one too. Utter class! This tune switches up the swagger and funk like no  other. I’d love to hear this one as a live rendition on stage today. Boy, would that be something. 

   Last up is Side F with ‘Blu Funk’ hitting the orbits of distant gravitational maneuvers and reflecting back the memoirs of those resonating sounds that Gavin sends with a gift that sets its own path. The blend of furrowed atmospherics and jazz funk in this tune is just pure magic. The chiseled edges are rounded out from fine angled fractures to gloriously arched sweeps over the gleaming landscapes as this one just infiltrates your mind. Nookie is such a supreme musician that I often wonder if he’s landed from another planet with his capabilities. One of our most prolific and respected producers and we got to experience his art in our life time. How god damn lucky we are. 

   Nookie, ya baaaaad! The good news is that we have a few EP’s of his heading our way in the not too distant future. 

   Tomorrow we have a little one-off CD review as it’s the next album in the series, which oddly never got pressed to vinyl? Don’t ask me why, but I’m sure someone may have a background on that one..more on it tomorrow. 

  There’s a blog here with some of my reviews on Good Looking. More to follow and eventually I’ll add in the sub labels. I’ve reviewed some already and just not put them in. Looking Good and Nexus is still to come too. Patience is a virtue, but in this game, time is precious too. I get it.