Bleep

Like many artists in the fervent and fruitful era of 90s electronic music, Luke Vibert amassed a massive discography by splitting his output across many colourful aliases. Throughout the 2020s he’s returned to some of his oldest projects: firstly reviving the Wagon Christ that started his solo career with new albums after almost a decade, now giving his second alias Plug a new lease of life after even longer with its third album Variety Magic.

Famed for its original and transgressive nature as a highly influential record in the early D&B scene, Plug’s debut album was born from sessions in the mid-90s with seemingly endless yield, as Vibert constructs a third LP solely from those original DATs. Variety Magic’s provenance is immediately obvious when the classic snappy breaks of ‘You’re Better Than That’ open the album, urging a minimal yet full bass breakdown which leads to a noir jazz slash downtempo hip hop sampledelic collage, drawing a blurry nightlife scene with bubbling tablas and hype men galore.

Vibert’s playfully intelligent talents reign supreme here, experimenting with cheeky vocal percussion of ‘Sound & Safe’ over waves of clanging metal breaks, while ‘Check This Out’ blows raspberries over winding jazzy passages stretching keys into shivering pads, like anti-lounging lounge music. Amid forceful yet smooth drums, stuttering snares, and suave and sweet samples, Vibert identifies himself as one of breakcore’s forefathers through the boss battle energy of ‘Things Get Hot’, combining grimy string stabs, dextrous sitar guitar, and incessantly frothing breaks.

The 90s archive of Luke Vibert’s Plug sessions is the gift that keeps giving as he unearths yet another stellar LP’s worth of unreleased gems.