The arrival of Chimes once again raises an important question: When will the next full-length Hudson Mohawke record come out? As nice as bite-size nuggets of HudMo goodness like this release and its predecessors Satin Panthers (2011) and TNGHT (2012) are, they only serve to whet the appetite for the long-delayed follow up to his audacious debut LP Butter (2009). Chimes is another serviceable offering from Scottish electronic wunderkind Ross Birchard, though at four tracks (one of which is a remix) the package is slight in comparison to the far superior Satin Panthers.
While Chimes is evidence that Birchard’s penchant for casting mad sounds together into tracks that bridge the gap between the experimental and the danceable as well as his cheeky demeanor (the barking hook that recurs throughout the title cut is certainly worth several chuckles) are undiminished, the EP is frankly HudMo-by-numbers, and it unfortunately contains no standout equal to past classics “Joy Fantastic” or “All Your Love”. Instead, “Chimes” itself is merely good (the Gammer remix at the end betters the more languid standard version), while “Brainwave” and “King Kong Beaver” — brief detours into sonic boffindom of the sort Birchard likes to partake in on all his records — are decent yet are nonetheless less than filling. Chimes comes off feeling like a holding pattern, and hopefully that doesn’t remain the case for too long — Butter was a stellar album, and a proper follow-up that aims to attain similar glories is long overdue.