Review

Daz-I-Kue: Smell ‘Urself (I-Kue Recordings)

Daz-I-Kue is an artist I’ve had a lot of respect for over the years. Daz was a founding member of seminal west London group Bugz in the Attic, one of my favourite ever acts.

These days Daz has swapped the roads of west London for the freeways of Atlanta, but crossing the pond hasn’t stopped him producing music of a very high calibre. Daz’s latest offering ‘Madam CJ – "Smell ‘Urself’" is the first release on his new label, I-Kue Recordings, that will concentrate more on the up-tempo house side of things. Dance music fans…you are going to be in for a treat with this label if this first release is anything to go by.

"Smell ‘Urself" is more on the soulful house tip, but still retains enough of Daz’s trademark production skills for it to cross other genre boundaries too; the sign of a good piece of music! We start off with a semi-broken 4/4 beat and rhythmically shifting bassline. The percussion on this number is solid, with a tambourine shake at the end of every bar (and sometimes every other bar) slowing the whole thing down, but don’t be fooled, it’s still running at over 120.

The keys are subtle too, they all add to the overall ambience of the track without being too overpowering and Madame CJ’s crisply delivered vocal is like the raising agent of a cake mix bringing all of the other ingredients together, and delivering a very, very tasty treat indeed.

A dub also comes with this two track package and is definitely worth a mention. There is a very ‘Shaft-esque’ feeling to this at the start, before the looped and distorted vocal, complete with gliding string and Juno sounding riffs all introduce themselves. The percussion on this dub seems a lot tougher than on the original and works so well with the surrounding melodies.

I’m listening to the dub for the third time now, it really is totally different to the original and has much more of a deep house feel, but with some gloriously 80’s sounding stabs. This is a fantastic dub, it’s a track within its own right and the only thing confusing me now is what mix I should now listen to again.

Decisions, decisions…hmm, I’ll listen to them both again as they are equally excellent.

Listen here:
Original mix
Dub mix
Words GARETH MORGAN