*Sniffs, takes a sip*

Interesting!

For better or for worse, mostly better, this is absolutely the future of footwork (which is itself the purported future of dance music, at least in even-numbered years). I've made no secret of my enthusiasm for what DJ Taye is doing these days, and for the most part Still Trippin' comes through on the promise of Burnin Ya Boa. Everything's a little less rote, expanding the rhythmic frameworks of footwork beyond everything, all the time, at 160 bpm and incorporating cues from dance musics around the world, an exciting and long-awaited development for the ever-globalizing Teklife crew. Given the tendency for any Teklife-related release to feature half the roster in some way or another, I'm reading this as good news for the whole group, not just Taye.

Also notable: Trippin, and a few other tracks to a lesser extent, are the furthest that I've heard a footwork artist lean into full-on rapping, rather than the looped phrases that have defined the genre to date. It's something that Taye has been playing with for a while, and when he figures it out he's got the potential to do something crazy. It's a bit rough for now (although the line started making footwork just to get up in The Fader is hilarious), but I'll never turn my nose up at the chance to watch an artist refine this sort of thing.

I couldn't really shoehorn this in anywhere, but DJ Taye flipped a Cocteau Twins song once!

Highlights: 2094, Bonfire (ft. DJ Paypal), Closer