- Deluxe 20th Anniversary Edition
- 2lp Blue/Red vinyl
- With infinity peelable trouser sticker
Originally released in 2002, “Trouser Jazz” was the hotly anticipated follow-up to the Manchester-based DJ, producer, record collector and cartoonist’s barnstorming Ninja Tune debut “Keep it Unreal” (1999). As a DJ, Andy Carthy aka Mr. Scruff plays across the board, moving between soul, funk, hip hop, jazz, reggae, latin, african, ska, disco, house, funk, electro, breaks, soundtracks and loads more. As a producer he makes music that draws on these influences, with a large dose of cheek and good humour. His cartoon drawings illustrate gig flyers, posters, record sleeves, t-shirts and occasionally accompany him at gigs as live animated visuals.
“Trouser Jazz” – recorded largely at Carthy’s home studio with engineer Danny Evans – neatly encapsulated Scruff’s ethos, his joie de vivre and his inimitable combination of tight knit funk, expansive sonics and dancefloor dynamite.
“The album is a real mixture of moods and tempos, just like my DJ sets, twisting my influences and inspirations into different shapes,” explains Andy. “It was also the time when I started to develop my low-end addiction, as tracks such as ‘Ug’ and ‘Shelf Wobbler’ testify. The collaborations were enjoyable too, from Bernard Moss’ one-take flute that Seaming & Sneaky built a track around on ‘Valley of the Sausages’, Braintax’s medieval working-class themed rap on 'Vibrate', Sneaky’s bass and Andy Kingslow’s abrasive synth solo on ’Shrimp’ (which was the first of many tracks we did together), Andy K again on ‘Champion Nibble’, Niko’s glorious & touching vocals on ‘Come Alive’ and Seaming's otherworldly vocals on ‘Beyond’. When I listen back to Trouser Jazz, I can feel the fun and energy from those studio sessions.”
Everyone including Pitchfork delighted in the record’s joyful eclecticism: “Trouser Jazz is quite possibly the answer to all of your sugar-fueled Saturday morning disco prayers, churning out one chocolate-frosted cereal box prize after another and bringing down the house with an inspired mix of rubbery funk, hipster soul and gleefully contorted, krush groovin’ hip-hop.”
It’s tough to pick out highlights in a set of consistently top drawer productions but ‘Shrimp’ is an inspired fusion of Mizell Brothers cool and Roger Troutman’s squelchy funk; ‘Come Alive’ is a triumphant soulful jaunt blessed with Niko’s vocal and rooted by the most hypnotic bassline on the album. Meanwhile the outright dumb ‘Ug’ is “a giant teddy bear of a track… the subcutaneous bellow of the bassline, the Flat Eric keyboard squawks and slithering hi-hat snaps propel it to the top of the heap” (Pitchfork). Undoubtedly it was the aforementioned characteristics that made ‘Ug’ a stone cold backroom classic.
