Bleep

Mike Paradinas’ mission throughout the 2020s so far has been to revive his many aliases, from a highly anticipated run of new albums as µ-Ziq to experiments as Tusken Raiders and plumbing the archives of Jake Slazenger. In 2025, it’s Kid Spatula’s turn to come back to the spotlight, with the first album of new material since 2004’s Meast. While following from Grush earlier in the year, Joozy fronts more nonlinear progressions than the poppier, sugarier µ-Ziq affair, pointing towards irreverent and curious cuts from Kid Spatula’s catalogue.

Opening on a maelstrom of a track, Joozy proves meaner and gnarlier with the blizzard of claps on ‘Spitalfield’, pushing the bass groove through menacing sparkles of melody and blurry vocals. There’s a meteoric energy to many tracks here: fiery and scattered sounds with an imposing presence. Asymmetrical rhythms hammer and brood, drums are crushed and breaks slither through shifting frequencies. Paradinas’s playful attitude is toothsome yet clever, shown in the breaks of ‘On The Green’ rising from and diving into pools of slushy amniotic ambience, and a sly four to the floor thumping then disappearing from the fizzing trancelike synths of ‘Clubman’. The title track’s woozy, sludgy atmosphere is broken up with steel wool scribbles and scratches, ending the album on a comparatively minimal yet effective drum machine workout.

As Joozy lands on Third Kind Records, the label’s anonymous collective Sussex Telecom provide two bonus remixes reifying Kid Spatula’s serrated yet suave: ‘Barb 1’ is rendered more optimistic with upbeat chiptune and jubilant MIDI harps, winds, and strings, contrasted by the frenetic microbeats of their take on the title track, glitching and stuttering into a bass heavy two step passage before returning to 8 bit explosions.

Kid Spatula returns after twenty years with triumphant leftfield productions on Joozy.