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Although the London club/record label's mix series is known for delivering top-notch cover art, fabric has truly nailed it with installment #55 from Shackleton. The image of a body huddled under a white sheet is your entrance to 80 minutes of music that would sound otherworldly when slathered across the walls of a cavernous club but could just as likely soundtrack your most introverted nightmare. Uneasy dub and tribal rhythms drip along, accented by undulating chants and monotone non-sequiturs that sound ripped from a NatGeo doc on aborigine folk. Hypnotic pulsations churn through for a couple bars before being swallowed up by the bass, never to be heard from again. Shackleton made the call to construct this fabric mix using only his own material in an attempt to emulate his live set — as have like-mindfucked artists Ricardo Villalobos and Omar-S before him. And though nearly half the tracks here have seen previous release on some label or another, the mix never seems anything but fresh; the choice meat of those cuts is sliced out and reassembled to shape an ominous sequence, restlessly tossing and turning.
