Charnel House EP

To follow a long awaited single from the legendary D’Arcangelo brothers, Happy Skull has turned to a friend of the family and former Bristol scene stalwart, Bass Clef.

The long-serving producer first rose to prominence via a series of inspired, genre-mangling albums and singles on Blank Tapes, he has since gone on to deliver hard-to-pigeonhole material on fellow Bristol labels Punch Drunk and Idle Hands, as well as PAN and the Trilogy Tapes amongst others.

Those versed in his bulging back catalogue will notice familiar stylistic traits throughout – think an endearing looseness built on hardware manipulation and a playfulness rarely seen in modern dance music. For his Happy Skull debut he takes on acid house, to great effect. This is most evident on flipside “Acid Hearse”, a constantly-rising roller built around a nagging, TB-303 style riff and a swinging, off-kilter drum machine rhythm.

Echoes of acid can also be heard in the sparser A-side, “Charnel House”, where sharp, psychedelic lead lines and mind-bending electronic motifs weave in an out of a crunchy rhythm track to create a track that is as fun as it is weighty.