Well okay, Hakim: the Chicago producer (and former contributor to this space) Hakim Murphy has been travelling the world this year, both solo and with Ike Release as part of Innerspace Halflife. Following his exploits from afar, I’m not sure how he’s managed to maintain a rather hectic release schedule, not least of all with all of these pieces coming out (as they always have and presumably always will) on vinyl.

Murph Tone Jack Session II is the concluding 12″ installment of what was originally described as an album, split in half and released over the course of 2013. Hakim’s sound is raw as fuck, sometimes experimental but always danceable with a few surprises tossed in (see, for instance, the indiscriminate crowd noise and mad ranting on “Chicago Head” punctuated by the two-tone chime of the “Door’s Closing” warning of the El).

The B-side is where the action is, though: “Tender B” is breathtaking, and the swell of emotion at the conclusion of “Gestation” is worth the price of the record alone. The track starts out with steely percussion and a tumble-down bassline and pulls itself together into some kind of winsome dirge. There’s an abiding principle of finding order out of chaos that I hear in almost everything Hakim does: the sound you begin with is hardly ever the one you’re listening to six minutes later. It makes his material frustrating to categorize for easy consumption and, for the same reason, timeless.

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