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The west London centred sound of broken beat (sometimes known as nu jazz) has been heavily pushed by DJ Gilles Peterson, a man whose tastes can normally be relied on as a guide to what’s worth listening to. But in the case of broken beat I’ve never been able to fully buy into the genre. Perhaps it’s because it often feels like a wilfully obscure scene, intent on talking to itself, with producers trying to out-do each other in terms of who can produce the most disjointed beats and out of sync vocals.

While some of its purveyors, such as 4hero and Bugz in the Attic, have created music with genuine cross-over potential, many seem happy to be big fish in a little pond. Considering the pedigree of the two members of The Politik however, it seems unlikely that they would be content to settle for such status. Yet opening track ‘The Essence’ is broken beat by numbers; a beat so erratic it would be almost impossible to dance to, with strings and synths seemingly thrown at it by someone who has just bought their first copy of Pro Tools.

Luckily things improve, as The Politik spend more time using influences such as Roy Ayers and Fela Kuti (the spiritual fathers of the whole scene) to shape the music. There are several stand-out tracks, such as ‘Black Sun’, with its echoes of Jazzanova, ‘Saturn’, with its lovely up-tempo blend of nu jazz and contemporary R&B, and ‘Turn The Light’, which brings Afro-beat right into the 21st Century. But there are also far too many average tracks.

Many songs sound indistinguishable from the works of the aforementioned Bugz or Jazzanova. And too often the music seems to be aimed at the head, rather than the heart; as if The Politik have spent too long listening to the sort of self-indulgent noodlings that give jazz a bad name, rather than the more soulful offerings that could truly add something to the music. Final track ‘The Essence (Reprise)’ sees The Politik end in the same way it starts; wrapped up in its own little world, blind to the opportunities that some of the songs hint at.

While this will no doubt appeal to devoted fans of the broken beat scene, anyone looking for true 21st Century soul could do worse than Platinum Pied Pipers’ Triple P. Bizarrely the Pipers’ normally excellent Waajeed is the co-producer on the album’s two worst songs: ‘The Essence’ and ‘The Essence (Reprise)’. It must be something about the water in west London.

The Politik will be released on July 31, 2007

Links:
The Politik on MySpace
Antipodean Records