Just vibing. That’s how Mo Kolours rolled on this album. Chilling in his spot in London. Front room full of like-minded fam, chatting about tunes, pulling out dusty records.
He’d chop ill beats and hum melodies, and if their heads started nodding, he’d take that one over the line. Adding his vocals and percussion, or sounds from GarageBand.
Inspired by beat-diggers and sample-flippers from across the pond like Dilla and Madlib, he’d whip up his own take on that deep vinyl crate alchemy, employing his gift for spotting a loop’s potential and innate sense of rhythm, in order to lace it with the perfect drum swagger.
It never felt like work. Writer’s block was a problem for the next man. He’d turn out tens of these jazzy, dubby, percussion-blessed boom-bap grooves a day. Stocking folders on his computer with hundreds per month, until it came time to sift through them, pick the winners, and add his vocals and extra musical flourishes for this self-titled gem of an album.
The resulting, spontaneous soundcraft that runs through it – part instinctual sample collage, part deliberate tone texturing – drew heavily from a shelf’s worth of musical influences and genres, from all corners of the globe.
There are touches of Detroit in the mix, with house and hip-hop heads both getting a nod in his work, as well as Brazilian
