Through Storm & Grief is the new long player from DJ Platurn and finds him providing something of a stylistic follow-up (albeit solo and instrumental) to his Covid LP project – Somewhere There’s Music as one half of Sundur with vocalist Savannah. I say ‘solo’ – this one does also feature contributions from Antibalas’ Martín Perna, Connie Price & The Keystones’ Dan Ubick and The Du-Rites’ Jay Mumford among others which is an impressive list of collaborators, you’ll probably agree. As with Sundur when it came out, comparisons with Portishead and Massive Attack will probably abound and certainly in as far as they were relevant with Sundur, they’re relevant here too for there is no doubt that generically, the ten-track Through Storm & Grief is very much indebted to the late 90s ‘trip-hop’ aesthetic. If asked however, the monkey might humbly suggest that much better reference points for this LP are that era’s work from Aim whose albums Cold Water Music and Hinterland (in the original version) were musically way closer to Through Storm & Grief or even Shadow’s Endtroducing.
As with Aim and Shadow there’s a lushness about the production, and a similar air of melancholy hanging over the album from opener Wandering Around with its 70 bpm drums, backwards-playing synth loop and slowed-down rap sample hook. But as with Aim and Shadow – like Platurn also hip-hop heads well-steeped in the culture – there is a clear sense of both soul and what a righteously phat drum break sounds like. For the former check track 2 Give A Damn and for the latter see track 3 Solo Traveller. Unlike Aim or Shadow, the melancholy is not unrelenting however – and by track 4 the closest thing to any dancefloor action on this one – the Dan Ubick-featuring Singing Our Song kicks off with an retro upbeat female vocal sample before big chants and an even bigger drum break kick in – an obvious third single, were one to be released. Talking of singles, the two thus far released are both in the final third of this – the Kicker Dixon-featuring Spatial Awareness and Keith Lawrence-featuring closer Going Home. While both are more typical of the album than, say, Singing Our Song, the former rocks a low-key stoner beats vibe while the latter is a tonally, bitter-sweet, big (backwards) chords affair over yet another gratifyingly large drum break. Well, if you’ve got ’em…
(Out now HERE)