PRE-ORDER: Starkey ft. Anneka - Stars [Planet Mu]

Street Bass don Starkey drops another single from his forthcoming album ‘Ear Drums and Black Holes’ on Planet Mu. After the smooth R&B meets grime episode of ‘Ok Luv’ featuring the vocals of Badness comes another vocal cut but it’s on an entirely different tip. Featuring the vocal stylings of Anneka, who you may recall from Starkey’s ‘Build a Beat’ session on BBC Radio One the other month.

‘Stars’ comes in two forms here; the original is a warm, mellow and cosmic journey, whilst Brighton based beat merchant Slugabed takes that template and shatters it, in a freak experiment that leans it away from the headphones and more towards the dance floor. Anneka shines on both versions, either sweetly floating over the original’s deep space soul or chopped into melodic accents on Sluga’s refix. The remix isn’t as bat-shit as some of Slugabed’s previous material but he adds a nice bit of robo-boogie and keeps the vibe of the original in-between outbursts of smeared bass noise and clattering beats.

The two b-sides see Starkey back in the mode we’re most use to; on ‘Starting Gates’ he unleashes some of his evil bots, who I presume control the basslines as they’re pretty deviant, but as always Starkey’s melodic nature nestles inside the hype within the twisted musical progressions. It’s the wide screen cinematic experience of ‘Millennia’ that really takes the biscuit on the flip, Starkey shows his 3D sound ambition with massive builds full of sweeping synths before launching into a hyper-melodic bass drop and a positive flurry of snappy R&B beats.

Words: James Balf
Out: 8th March 2010



Links:
www.myspace.com/starkey
www.myspace.com/annekamusic

You can download Starkey’s recent mix & Sluga’s remix of ‘Stars’ on the NME(!?) here:

DOWNLOAD: Starkey – NME mix

Tracklist:

01 - Starkey ft. Cerebral Vortex & Buddy Leezle "Club Games" (planet mu)
02 - Starkey "OK Luv" (planet mu)
03 - Starkey "Millennia" (planet mu)
04 - Tayo meets Acid Rockers ft. Pupajim "Vampayaa (Starkey remix)" (cool & deadly)
05 - Swindle "Airmiles" (planet mu)
06 - Grems ft. Foreign Beggars "Brokabilly" (dub)
07 - Mensah "Pulse 80's" (hench)
08 - Kingdom "DPM / Juke Ya Girl Remix (Extended)" (dub)
09 - Starkey "Capsule" (planet mu)
10 - Numan "Skull Crusher (Bombaman remix)" (slit jockey)
11 - DNAEBEATS ft. NastyNasty "Aqua Bubble Hash" (seclusiasis)
12 - Rudi Zygadlo "Resealable Friendship (Slugabed's Special Friends Deepest Holes remix)" (planet mu)
13 - EPROM "Humanoid VIP" (dub)
14 - Starkey "Spacecraft" (planet mu)
15 - Kaiser "Lost in an Analogue Dream" (slit jockey)
16 - 8Bitch "G41" (slit jockey)
17 - Starkey ft. Anneka "Stars" (planet mu)