Rhythm Baboon: Jambah Bongo Dub EP
Concrete Cut Recordings

Jambah Bongo Dub EP presents a fine quartet of tracks that impresses even more for being Rhythm Baboon's debut solo release. The man behind the primate mask is one Szymon Listewnik, a Gdansk, Poland-based DJ, producer, and graphic designer who's been spinning discs (vinyl only) under the name Simc for over a decade and first appeared under the new alias on the Mad-Hop Vol. 2 compilation series. The EP's framed with two tasty samplings of futuristic bass science, “A Girl From Outer Space” and “Very Triple Drop,” with the former interspersing primal vocal yelps and lush synthetic detailing with a bumping, garage-tinged swing and the latter sneaking house vocal elements into its electro-funk dubstep pulse. Listewnik occasionally sprinkles his tracks with natural elements, such as hand drums in “Hunting Bushman,” while also incorporating no shortage of standard genre signifiers such as claps and bass throb. Similar to Shackleton, Listewnik also weaves exotic sounds into his tripped-out material, with a dub bass pulse aligning with multiple percussive strands during the title track, in one such example. Rhythm Baboon's material deftly sidesteps any one delimiting genre by weaving strands of dubstep, garage, funk, and house into the EP's eighteen minutes, though it must be said one would likely find the material slotted into the dubstep section, though dubstep of the forward-thinking kind associated with figures like Peverelist and 2562.

June 2011