Album Review: Wagon Christ - Toomorrow

 After a long hiatus to pursue many and varied interests that haveincluded Plug and Amen Andrews, Toomorrow sees South Coast electronic stalwart Luke Vibert returns to his Wagon Christ moniker for the first time in seven years. Vibert has been setting the scene to electronic music in Britain for almost two decades now and unsurprisingly what we get here is a lesson in the crafting of chilled out loops, riffs and samples. It’s a return to the sound that has come to define all his Wagon Christ releases and while this is of course welcomed, Toomorrow never really ends up troubling the high points of Vibert’s rich back catalogue.

The trademark humour in Vibert’s choice of samples is still present in spades mind, as are his top mixing and production chops. The edgy, dark and rave tinged ‘Manalyze This’ (get it?) is a clear example of the latter while the seriously funky ‘Respectrum’, a definite highlight here, certainly fits into the former category. Elsewhere ‘Toomorrow’ - with its calls to get you on the dance floor - reintroduces the kind of beats Vibert fans will be very familiar only it does end up a little over laden with vocal samples. There are no such problems with the comically-tinged ‘Wake Up’ though and its call for Britain to, well, wake up. Social commentary through electronic music? It must be the 90s again!

Unfortunately however the funkier, more Hip Hop influenced moments like ‘Respectrum’ don’t appear til late on and it takes you nine tracks to find a chilled out groove (‘Oh, I’m Tired’) capable of sliding in and sweeping you away. You only have to wait four more and ‘Chunkothy’, track 13 of 15, for another such moment, even if it does sound like its been whipped from an early Lemon Jelly album.

Toomorrow ultimately follows the tried and tested format of Musipal and Sorry I Make You Blush, Wagon Christ’s two previous releases on Ninja Tune, and while the album is undoubtedly extremely tight and well produced, it lacks the organic feel and humour of the decade-old Musipal in particular. This isn’t to say this is not a good album, it is, particularly in its very inventive use of its breakbeats and occasional hark back to trip hop, but rather than filling your kitchen at a house party or couch at the after party, it merely coasts along.