Dexta & Hyroglifics: Boxgroove / Move Over / The Dogz
Diffrent Music

This three-track EP is a fine follow-up to Diffrent Music's recent Evolution Of The Giraffe LP collection, with the imprint once again showing that while it makes sense for its music to be associated with the drum'n'bass genre label, it's in no way delimited by it. On the fifteen-minute EP, Chris Dexta (Diffrent Music manager) and Hyroglifics (Guildford-based Matt Harris) team up for a joint track and contribute solo cuts, too. Powered by a punchy, neck-slapping pulse, their collab “Boxgroove” catches one's attention with a filthy bass lurch and crushing drum patterns that alternate between a slow crawl and rapid scurry. Bolstered by an army of noises generated by the Roland MC303 Groovebox, the tune's a head-spinner of the first order which, like the bloodiest car wreck, is pretty much impossible to ignore. Hyroglifics' “Move Over” then relocates the EP within hip-hop territory, combining as it does an MC's monotone chant with a swaggering, snare-popping groove that writhes and rolls with fiery determination. Dexta likewise transports the release into a different zone when “The Dogz,” his first solo effort, offers a dizzying, switched-up take on jungle (‘giraffe-jungle' he calls it) that in its incorporation of gravelly patois calls to mind dBridge's recent “Move Way” and its own dreadwise speechifying of a Jamaican rastaman. Obviously one could do worse than find one's work spoken of in the same breath as dBridge's.

March 2014