For nearly ten years, Hauke Freer and Matthias Reiling have been working at their hybrid Session Victim project, where one fiddles with machines while the other turns his inspired hand to bass and guitar. An off-format combo that has been making milestones in the history of groove since its first album The Haunted House of House and in 2012, with the unstoppable and utterly chill Good Intentions. Crazy about vinyl, the duo works like a hip-hop outfit, from samples, before transposing everything over uptempo beats for their furious live performances. But for this fourth album, Session Victim are moving away from the clubs and towards a more classic approach, with material taken from old soul, funk, hip-hop and jazz records. So obviously, we think of Massive Attack, Morcheeba (especially on Made Me Fly with Beth Hirsch, the American singer heard on Air's Moon Safari) and the whole trip hop wave of the 90's, which drank from the same source of vintage soul & jazz, but also DJ Shadow and the label Talking Loud. It's as if Freer and Reiling wanted to pay tribute to this bubbling musical era, the true Eldorado of groove. One of the best records of its kind out at the moment. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz