Switched On

Mr. Chop is the alias of Coz Littler, a musician and producer who has an impressive collection of analog equipment and likes his sounds in the vintage style. Littler walks it like he talks it on Switched On, his second album as Mr. Chop; with the exception of one original composition, it's a set of vintage instrumental funk workouts played by Littler and a handful of like-minded studio hands who cut a fat groove while laying all kinds of analog synth madness over the top in a hail of electronic bleeps and blurts. Littler's choice of material is eclectic enough, ranging from Jimmy Smith and Fred Wesley to Coxsone Dodd and Can, and he and his cohorts know how to lay down some percolating funk while Littler and Mark Burnley make with some abstract synth gurgling that, in this context, sounds more than a little like DJ scratching. The electronics add a cool sheen to performances designed to draw raw sweat, and while the original recordings were frequently dominated by acoustic instruments, the aging synths employed by Mr. Chop give Switched On the sound of an antique electro-funk session. Despite the differences in the instrumentation, Littler and his friends haven't messed much with the essential nature of these songs and their arrangements, so for fans of classic R&B grooves the question is if you want to hear these redone as if they were on some oddball Moog sampler album found in a bargain bin; if the answer is yes, Mr. Chop plays these songs with plenty of fire and a potent dash of wit, and if Switched On sounds more like a novelty than anything else, it's a good enough novelty to bear repeated listening (and fill up the dancefloor if a DJ tossed the right track into the mix).