Whodat: The Recovery EP
Uzuri Recordings

Uzuri's first release of the new year comes from Whodat (Terri McQueen), who runs the Ya Digg Records store in her Detroit home base and also hosts a radio show called Turning Point. Though it's at times a bit of a head-scratcher, the EP shows she's got production skills, too.

The opening “Shut Up and Dance” catches the ear right away with its novel combination of clanging bell and wordless vocal patterns. It's a dreamy opening effect that hardly suggests dancefloor abandon, even if Whodat does gradually work the elements into an insistent rhythmic flow. Whatever it lacks in club punch, it makes up for in originality—just don't come to it expecting a raver. Tony Cak's “Shut Up and Dance” remix is closer in spirit to the kind of barn-burner one might expect from a cut so titled. In this case, Cak, an Indiana-based producer and radio DJ that McQueen met at a Techno music conference in 2005, transforms Whodat's original into a low-level stomper without sacrificing the original's clangorous nature. Wholly different in feel, The B-side's “Love 4 Köln” (a love letter from Whodat to friends in Cologne, Germany that includes contributions from Detroit native Reginald J. Austin Jr. and Viola Klein) opts for a rather dusty, old-school vibe in wedding acoustic piano chords and claps to a raw and slinky groove and pulsating bass line.

March 2013