Dip Friso - Crocodile or Real?

Dip Friso is another alias of Glasgow's Murray Collier, an artist we last heard from pre-pandemic via his excellent Sunny Balm project. Crocodile or Real? suggests the last few years have been busy ones for Collier. The Sunny Balm record was a mostly fourth world orientated exploration of layered electronics and rhythms, a sound you might align with fellow Glaswegians, 12th Isle. Much of that process has been abandoned, replaced by a sample-based, dub-wise approach that feels much more Bristol-bound than situated north of the border. Quixotic and shape-shifting, the result lands somewhere between Focus Group's ghostly plunderphonics (not used that term in a minute lol) and early DJ Shadow or Books cut-n-paste adventurism. Those are reference points a little out of sync with current trends, but it's all the better for it, fresh and playful, though also woozy and labyrinthian, too. A lot to pick apart here, or instead just get lost in. Either way, Collier shows himself once again to be a young artist of considerable note.