Time was when you went down to the crossroads, and signed your soul away to a Lucifer in return for skill at playing the blues. Nowadays, the digital age allows you to create your own crossroads by intersecting the sound of the path chosen by Robert Johnson with those of jazz, and some synth-heavy glitchy breaks. Kind of like Beat Fatigue does here on his debut Malfunktionality. That’ll be twelve instrumental cuts then shot through quite a lot of the time with snatches of blues vocal samples and Claptonesque guitar (like on opener A Blues Malfunktion) but just as likely to feature funky slap bass (Plectrum), writhing oriental flute sounds (One Flute Over The Cuckoo’s Nest) or snarling synths (Plectrum again) and – er – jazz piano. As anyone who’s ever made instrumentals will tell you – the absence of a vocalist means you’ve got to work a lot harder to keep it interesting so it’s reassuring to find that Beat Fatigue doesn’t run out of ideas and that everything on Malfunktionality seems to work just fine. Look out for Part Two later this year which promises to feature all manner of collaborations…
(Out 9 June on Adapted Records)