Tommy Guerrero's day job was riding for Powell Peralta. His other work was making slow instrumental funk in a San Francisco bedroom, recording straight to four-track in the early nineties. This EP collects four of those pieces, all tracked between 1993 and 1994, most of which appeared on a limited cassette in '95 before this proper release seven years later.
The sound is sample-based hip hop slowed to a crawl, drum breaks chopped and looped under basslines that sag like telephone wire. DJ Pause scratches over "Architec". "Smooth" lives up to its name with a two-chord vamp and no hurry to get anywhere. "Slow Ride Soul" was the one that stayed in the drawer until now, all Rhodes and rim clicks. Guerrero was working without a safety net or much gear, which gives the tracks a pleasant fuzziness around the edges. Barry McGee did the artwork.
If you came up on skate videos from that era, or you collect anything on Mo' Wax, this sits in the same part of the shelf. Not groundbreaking, just well-made and still listenable twenty years on.
