Tigerskin & Grambow’s Looking for Mushrooms

For a decade or more people have been predicting that live performance – I mean in the sense of a band, not so much a DJ crouching over a laptop with some of his or her production kit balancing awkwardly on a CDJ in the booth – will take over dance music. There have been some profoundly brilliant examples of it on the soulful house side, but in terms of longevity, Tortured Soul turned out to be an outlier rather than a harbinger of a future populated by bands. None seem to last longer than it takes for everyone to do their taxes after the tour and understand the calculus that one person playing records makes far more money than four of them playing songs.

Which is a shame, because Tigerskin, Grambow and sometimes Das Eb appear to have the foundation of a truly unique sound here. “Jazzy” is a quite inadequate description: with the exception of the Italoesque “Octocat,” these tracks are jazz, experimental jazz, sometimes acid jazz – but wholeheartedly: they’re jazz. “Red Fox” is really a stunner, drawing on influences from DeBussy to Beautiful Music.

Vinyl from Dirt Crew.