- There's a certain power in sounding like you don't quite know what you're doing. Photonz have it in spades. Clearly they know how house music is supposed to work. They just tweak it enough so that each and every time you play one of their tracks, you do a tiny double take. "Compulsion," their latest one-sider for the ever-reliable Dissident imprint, is yet another entry in their increasingly just-strange catalogue.
The track, like much of their output, is a hair-too-long for home listeners and the perfect length for DJs. At nine minutes, though, the track-y number does just enough to keep your interest either way. Coupling a faint echo of the sort of dubby effect that Levon Vincent often applies to his tracks and a shuffling drum track, the duo plot out a surprisingly insistent 110 BPM pattern before adding a quavering synth and rubbery bassline. It proudly drops elements in and out, picking up a single handclap in a concert hall, a hip-hop vocal sample and a counter-rhythm along the way, adding more incongruous bits to the stew. That they're incongruous, of course, is exactly the point. It's not exactly DJ Koze-level madness, but it's just enough for you to sit up and take notice. And isn't that why we listen to music?