Red Tape

Brooks’s first album took a sideways look at deep house and techno, but ‘Red Tape’ is a more adventurous affair, as the precocious producer travels down the same experimental path as label owner Herbert. ‘Tape’ alternates between glitchy cut-ups, clunking metallic rhythms and a new found love of camp electro. ‘Bedbugs’ features Brooks’s detached vocals and an atmospheric clarinet over a buzzing bass, ‘Restoration’ is a tense electronic narrative and ‘Roxxy’ makes a lo-fi mockery of glitzy electroclash. The man with the big chin has worked wonders again.