Sherwood & Pinch, Man Vs Sofa

★★★☆☆

Download: Roll Call; Midnight Mindset; Lies

This second collaboration between Adrian Sherwood and Rob ‘Pinch’ Ellis is a masterclass in soundscaping mystery and imagination which somehow yokes together the individual producer/DJs’ separate territories. “Roll Call” is a harbinger of things to come, full of sub-bass menace, with shadowy strings drawn around predatory pulse and synth – a largely uninhabited industrial dubscape further explored in tracks like “Man Vs. Sofa” and “Midnight Mindset”, the latter featuring sprays and trills of Martin Duffy’s piano pirouetting elegantly around smears of cello, deep bass pulse and scuttling beat. It’s an odd alliance of elements that seem at odds, but work beautifully together. A couple of tracks feature guest vocalists, with Taz and the late Junior Delgado’s contributions combined over the grim dubscape of “Gun Law”, while Lee Perry adds his own co(s)mic wisdom to “Lies”, celebrating “the mystic sky, the mystic I” over a swirl of water sounds and saxophones.