AMAZON
Hull's finest, and admittedly only, beat warriors return with an hour-long album from their latest recordings--the self-titled release Tetris. Despite this being only their second release for the Pork label; there is no doubt that producers Vlad Lozinsky, Pavel Hotin and ideas-monitor Dmitry Robegov are absolutely at home, their material mirroring Pork's reluctance to comply with any neat, genre categorisations. While the swirling synths which run throughout Tetris are distinctly house, other elements are much harder to pin down: the percussion wanders far from four-to-the-floor constraints, the melodics are equally freewheeling--shape-shifting from the supersharp horn samples of "Bye, Bye Baby" right through to the slippery keys of "White Russian". By way of contrast, the second half of the album gives way to a series of Nightmares on Wax-inspired smokers' delights, providing the framework for sprawling soundcapes--Tatiana Ipatova's occasional vocal touches soaked up by these all-enveloping sonic snowdrifts. This is one of those hard to place purchases that somehow keeps finding its way back into the player. --Kingsley Marshall