Generalisation

Generalistation is Damien Harris’ debut album and it manages to capture a diversity that the big beat posse never delivered.

Eclectic might be a dirty word, but Generalisation finds inspiration in a number of different sources, without sounding like a hotch potch succession of snapshots from an oversized record collection.

Opener ‘Keeping It Real’ is a sample fest of cut up hip-hop, setting the tone perfectly for an album’s worth of musical matching and splicing, followed by Harris classic ‘Devil In Sports Casual’, a big, dark bad beat tune. Despite the often laddish nature of the breaks/hip-hop world, Harris is nonetheless adept at crafting catchy pop tunes: witness the organ fuelled ‘Ricky 39’, ‘Reach Out’, and ‘Stig’s In Love’.

He also can turn his hand to the techno and house interfaces with ease, with recent single ‘General Of The Midfield’ and the funky techno of Coatnoise displaying a natural feel for 4/4 grooves. As many of his contemporaries turn to dark, twisted house, Harris has managed to go one further with a work that effortlessly covers all modern musical bases.