- Bob Bhamra's West Norwood Cassette Library is a wonderfully slippery little label. There's a definite aesthetic running through everything it's put out—essentially house, techno and garage made with an ingrained knowledge of UK rave history—but it's refreshingly difficult to predict quite how those traits will manifest themselves. In that sense WNCL is similar to Hessle Audio, which is probably its closest contemporary in UK club music. It also shares Hessle's knack for coaxing a particular sort of music out of its contributors: Brighton-based Bobby Champs' EP doesn't quite sound like it could fit anywhere but WNCL.
Like Bhamra's own recent productions, it's raw and immediate, hinting towards the rough-hewn energy of early drum & bass as much as it does European techno. The title track and "Stanton Shuffle" both skip along in leaps and bounds, their percussion floating several feet above the kicks that anchor them. The gravelly, Blawan-esque techno of "City Boy" is a highlight. It coasts in a rolling, casually funky manner, where percussive elements inside each bar rebound off one another like pinballs. Despite the exuberance of all four tracks, any showiness is tempered by their slightly muffled edges, which both heightens the elasticity of their rhythms and lends them an air of barely restrained mania.
Tracklist A1 Krenshaw
A2 Stanton Shuffle
B1 City Boy
B2 Bureau