DJ Oil - Phantom

Phantom (so-called because 'all these tracks live on my computer like ghosts, waiting to get out, and some never did get out') begins with an incredibly low-slung mutant rhythm 'n' blues instrumental (imagine Link Wray taking guitar lessons from John Lee Hooker on acid), and ends with a kind of abstract spiritual... and seems to take in pretty much the whole spectrum of black music on the way, music in which Lionel is thoroughly steeped (his father was a collector of soul and R&B, a passion that has continued to course through the Corsini blood), ending up somewhere altogether other-worldly. It's a dark, edgy, angst-ridden soundscape ('why don't I just drop out?' asks a voice, repeatedly) that invokes the un trammelled energies of '60s and '70s Black radicalism, animated jive-talk juxtaposed with the soothing tones of Africanist scholars discoursing on 'rhythm'.