Where’s your head??? J.C. Smith II aka Instinct released a small handful of records under various guises on his own Decisive Imprint, with Mindsearch being far and away the deepest and most highly sought after, taking Derrick May's sublime techno out of the stratosphere and establishing the blueprint for the interstellar funk grooves of Underground Resistance and Carl Craig’s early work in the process. Lead track “Mindsearch” is a deep afrofuturist trip into the cosmos, with a lush bed of synth strings floating atop a slamming techno beat and peppered with ravey, cut-up vocals (“you left your mind in Africa” — sounds a lot like Malcolm X to this reviewer). The same goes for “Catastrophe” on the flipside, albeit slightly jazzier and more jackin’, with the deepness resuming on “A Groove”. Originally mixed by Anthony “Shake” Shakir and lovingly made available by Berlin record store-cum-label Sound Metaphors, this pressing is long overdue as original copies are currently trading hands for over $100. Recommended.

• music label: Sound Metaphors 2017

reviewed by peanut dust 08/2017