Outlines – Listen To the Drums (Clignancourt Edit) [Sonar Kollectiv]

Parisian production trio Outlines take the three prongs of hip hop and give them a decadent French house twist.

Unknowingly familiar with the glitchy house of ‘Just a Lil’ Lovin” and later unwittingly hooked by an incidental airing of RZA-licious ‘Now That I’m Free’ I had no idea how good Outline’s long player Our Lives Are Too Short would prove to be. One of those rare albums whose quality never falters.

The original mix of ‘Listen To the Drums’, relegated to the B-Side of Part 1 of the 12″, is a slow-burning, cyclical jazz mood-setter that sounds to all the world like Christian Prommer’s Drumlesson sharing lecture notes with St Germain (there is, as it happens, a CPD remix of ‘Listen to the Drums’ on Part 2 that sounds little like either). An understated bubbler that never quite takes off, it is relegated to curio by the album’s ‘Clignancourt Edit’ that turns up the drums, turns on the menace and nudges it into gleefully dark dancefloor territory.

‘Listen To the Drums (Clignacourt Edit)’ by Outlines features on Part 1 of the 12″ EP and appears on the artist album Our Lives Are Too Short [Sonar Kollectiv/BMG].