DJ Nate - Take Off Mode [Planet Mu 406 Promo]

Put on the circuit via the great Planet Mu-label on April 26th, 2k19 is the new DJ Nate album "Take Off Mode", the first longplay outing by the Chicago-based Footwork / Juke producer in nine years after his musical focus shifted and he took the route into HipHop and R'n'B production, only occasionally coming back to his musical roots with a track, oftentimes accompanied by underground Youtube videos. With a selection of seventeen tracks collected over the years this album serves an overview on DJ Nate's Juke / Footwork-related work of the past years, still seeing the genre pioneer sticking true to his game and unique, well recognizable style which is heavily relying on weird, quirkily pitch-shifted and multilayered sample arrangements, bringing forth sonic rapid fire atop of sparse, abstract and oftentimes heavily syncopated beat structures. This style is defo a throwback to times the genre emerged to gain worldwide attention, mostly through Planet Mu picking up and releasing genre-defining tracks on their "Bangs & Works" compilation series but might not necessarily be appealing to those who've been picked up on Juke / Footwork in recent years as the styles musical priorities seem to have shifted and moved away from the more melodic, sample-heavy approach DJ Nate is following here. Still, "Talk 2 Me", "Get Off Me (Betta Get Back)" and "Planet Mu" are reasonable anthems one shouldn't miss out on.