SOUNDING like the kind of under-the-radar electronic bedroom project you might imagine first encountering late at night via a pirate radio station, The D.O.T. essentially takes Mike Skinner full-circle to breaking through with The Streets, ten years ago.
That desire to “do something different” which he enigmatically cited as motivation for winding-up his multi-million selling geezer garage/hip-hop project following 2011’s Computers and Blues, looks to be translating as a quick reconnection with the raw basics of music making, and the unpressured pleasures that come with it – playing small venues, and reaching out directly to fans by posting multiple tracks from forthcoming debut album And That online with lo-fi videos.
Also featuring singer/guitarist Rob Harvey – ex-of Leeds indie-disco band The Music – this partnership probably won’t achieve a fraction of The Streets’ success,though that might be the point. Skinner’s USP lads-eye-view of life raps have been shelved. Instead, he prefers to take more of a producer/DJ role, ensconced behind laptops and other electronic miscellanea and dressed like “an estate agent,” as he put it.
It was left to Harvey’s oddly tinny-sounding voice to carry most of the top-lines, over the oscillating drum’n’bass of What You Living For and on aggressive 90s garage of Goes Off.
Threading most tracks together mix-tape style did little to disguise how similar many of them are. The occasional pause saw Skinner casually sip a half bottle of vodka and crack jokes about Gary Barlow. Often drowned-out by unheeded calls from a well-oiled crowd for numbers by their old bands, those pauses may get shorter as this debut tour wears on.
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