Without You

King Midas Sound released their enthralling debut album ‘Waiting For You’ in the fading light of November 2009. A hypermodern nocturnal take on Lovers Rock, featuring delicate but sour electronic instrumentals topped with Roger Robinson's bitter-sweet falsetto and Kiki Hitomi’s fragile voice, it highlighted a hitherto less-exposed side not just of producer Kevin Martin’s musical evolution, but that Hyperdub’s too. ‘Waiting For You’ returns now as ‘Without You’, transformed by a raft of carefully chosen collaborators. Initially released as CD only set in late 2011, this new limited double LP version features three new vinyl-only mixes by T++, Intrusion, and King Midas Sound themselves. As a curator, Kevin Martin has a highly respected track record. He was behind the groundbreaking ‘Macro Dub Infection’, ‘Jazz Satellites’ and ‘Isolationist’ compilations in the late 90s, and more recently, selected half of the ‘Mysteron Killer Sounds’ dancehall set on Soul Jazz. For ‘Without You’ he has sourced a pool of radical reinterpretations that follow somewhat in the tradition of reggae, in the same way that the original ‘Waiting for You’ album did. Here instrumentals are reworked or totally rebuilt by a diverse set of artists from across the musical spectrum, and on other tracks, fresh vocal interpretations totally transform the flesh that adorns the bones of their parent rhythms. The album opens with Kuedo’s stumbling, exhausted waltz rework of ‘Goodbye Girl’, before D Bridge graces the rhythm for ‘Blue’ with his exquisite gentle falsetto, transforming it into ‘Without You’, adding layers of soaring chords that sound like a war in heaven. Flying Lotus’ mix of ‘Lost’ is loosely in a dancehall style, but fed through dizzying echo and crackle, while in stark comparison, Nite Jewel follows with a reinterpretation of ‘Lost’ as a sorrowful instrumental somewhere between synth funk and the Out Run arcade game soundtrack. Gang Gang Dance let the machine elves loose, turning the doomy