Hudson Mohawke - Butter

From somewhere within the wet and cold city of Glasgow, emerges a distinctly bright, unusual and unique sound that could easily have arrived from the sun-burnt streets of L.A. The eagerly awaited debut LP from Warp Records signing Hudson Mohawke has arrived, still riding a wave of underground hype that was generated by his underground mixes and previous EP Ooops!. In spite of being weighed down with one of the most bizarre genre tags in recent musical history, aqua-crunk, Hud Mo has managed to create a debut album that rises to expectations, regardless of how high they have been set.

Opening track Shower Melody submerges the listener in effect laced beats and drawn out guitar riffs, before dropping them straight into the high pitched video games bleeps and dubstep sound of Gluetooth. Quite a journey within the space of the introductory few minutes and that's before that skit at the end of Gluetooth. Delightfully unpredictable. By the time listeners reach Joy Fantastic, featuring the vocals of Oliver Daysoul, many will surely find that the track could easily sit on any Outkast album.

Perhaps that's the only criticism of Butter, in that the twists and turns within the record may leave some confused as to what they've been listening to. But when these unpredictable changes of musical direction occur as the by-product of an active imagination and never due to a lack of musical understanding, is that really a criticism at all?