The Minus roster is a fairly close-knit little circle—touring together, remixing each other, sounding more than a bit like each other—so it makes all the sense in the world for them to be making tracks together, as they do here on the first of what looks to be a new sub-series of “Versus” releases on the label. Maybe it’s the added aggro in the mix here, but these “battle” tracks are light years more interesting, lively, and downright fun than any tracks or remixes heard from this camp in a good long while.

Heartthrob takes on Troy Pierce on “Horse Nation Amended” with a dramatic spaghetti-western stance intro that soon breaks into a funky little rain dance, but the track’s secret weapon is the rolling locomotive of noises that lead into the fuzzed-up “ooh yeah yeah” and “bullshit” vocal samples that keeps it infectious and just the right side of lighthearted.

Further evidence of this is all over the flipside’s “Nasty Girl,” channelling Prince through Detroit minimal, peppering Gaiser’s trademark bubbling percussion fills with Heartthrob’s downlow rap about the track’s subject. You don’t expect humor and good-time dancefloor antics from Hawtin’s crew, which is a shame because apparently they do it very well, better than most in fact. Minus has never grooved this hard or sounded this loose, and it fits them to a tee. Hopefully we’ll get more of this and less cookie-cutter minimal from them in the near future.

Minus / MINUS 47
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[Todd Hutlock]