- Both Suff Daddy and Ta-Ku are beat-meddlers who trip about the globe quite a lot. That’s true of their sounds and their schedules. Suff Daddy is a Cologne producer who recently moved out to Melbourne, bringing with him a variegated back-catalogue of smoothly urban stuff: from old-school, instrumental hiphop, through r’n’b and nu-jazz to soulful, downbeat lounge. Ta-Ku is a Perth producer who, thanks to his schooling at the very worldly Red Bull Academy, is easily at the forefront of the pack producing the most nouveau of sounds coming out of WA, sounds that have in turn been well received in the places from which they originally came, generating not a little hype in the US for the young chap.

Despite their globe-trotting tendencies, the pair managed to bump into each other whilst both were in Australia and produced a little split between Sydney and Perth called Bricks & Mortar. Suff kicks it off with a leisurely and loungey little intro and a quick lesson on how to pronounce his name (Soooff - got it?), before pulling out a sweet piano bar melody and some shiny new sounding wonky beats, maybe in an attempt to prove that he can keep up with the kids. Nonetheless it wouldn’t feel out of place amongst any beat collection by Dilla or Madlib. Suff seems to know it too, because he quickly relaxes into much more old-school, jazzy, instrumental hip-hop, like he no longer had to suck his gut in and impress everyone.

At the last he pulls out some more synthy wonk, just before Ta-Ku jumps on the decks. Reminding us he can do that stuff too. Fair enough, because - I’ll be honest - I came here to hear what that hype-kid Ta-Ku is up to. If anything, Ta-Ku is heading in the opposite direction to Suff Daddy, reining in his experiments in Trap and Footwork and concentrating much more exclusively on beats that would sound at home on the Brainfeeder roster, aiming slightly into the past. All that old-school practice he got from his Fifty Days For Dilla project must surely have helped. Here the backwards focus helps to balance this split, stylistically meeting up in the middle.

Having said that, it may still list slightly toward its latter half: Ta-Ku’s contributions are some pretty punchy stuff, like single Clap For Me. Not even the pitch-shifted sample of Lou Bond on Need You can dent my enjoyment (when will hip-hop lose its fascination with that?). He tears up lots of soulful samples, sometimes to pretty sweet effect, like on the absolutely banging Cold. The king of them is probably Sway, which sounds a bit like a James Brown sex-er-cise workout fed through a wood-chipper.

This isn’t a competition, although it may sound like I’m turning it into one. Bricks & Mortar is a loungey, soulful mix of old and new and as such it has plenty to offer. Ta-Ku and Suff Daddy are both producers keeping an eye on and always keeping an ear out for.

- Chris Cobcroft.