- It wasn't that long ago we were talking about Teebs' debut album, Ardour, and its endless snippets of blissed out loops, neatly obscuring - in the cloudlike sound - those archetypal Brainfeeder beats. There's a metaphor in there for the career of Mtendere Mandowa (aka Teebs): since his efusion of elysian fragments hasn't quite found the same fame as some of his better known Brainfeeder buddies (do I even need to mention Flying Lotus anymore - his name is about as household as a noodley hip hop producer can get, right?). Nonetheless I really liked many, maybe most of those little bits of Teebs, more than other folks out there in the blogosphere I think, too. His sweetly floating sound is just one of the more enjoyable tangents in new hip hop that's going around. Fortunately his new record, Collections 01, is convincing many of the doubters to come to his gently glowing party. I reckon Teebs might be smiling wryly at this, because Collections 01, as you may have guessed from the name, is not an album proper, but just a collection of stuff he happened to be doing, including several collaborations with other folks, while not dealing with what he feels are his main artistic endeavours. Still, in just ten tracks there is an undeniably wider range of sonic inspiration, which clicks with the idea of a mind not rigidly focussed but wandering, experimenting. Thus we get songs like Cook, Clean, Pay The Rent - a swiftly psych rocking number gifted with a high flying vocalise straight out of an Ennio Morricone soundtrack; then there's the unexpectedly sledgehammer pound (in a velvet glove - this is Teebs we're talking about) of Pretty Polly, which marries that backbreaking beat to an ethereal psych-folk vocal in a way that can't fail to please. His first experimentation with harp samples - on the track Jahara - is alright, but a little too repetitively chopped up to really get me going. Perhaps it just suffers in comparison to the brilliance of his team-up with real, live harpist Rebekah Raff. On Verbena Tea, her lovely solo meanders thoughtfully for a minute or so before Teebs' beats comprised of an organ bass, what sounds like tongue clicks and all-encompassing bells, just blow your mind. I must admit that just everything else here never shone quite as brightly after hearing that track, though there are some other things which are still pretty neat. For instance, jazz pianist Austin Peralta (whose record for Brainfeeder a little while ago was kinda great), gets a heavily processed, camoflagued solo that winds through the lazy but jazzily syncopated LSP. Again, I'm standing at odds with the critical community because, barring Verbena Tea and a couple of others I felt that I liked the focussed thoughts of Teebs' debut, Ardour, a bit better than much of what's on display in Collections. I'd kinda like for him to know that, too, because the unexpected warm welcome Collections' has received has gotta be making the guy scratch his head. Ah, whatever, it's not as if I'm not thoroughly enjoying some aspect of everything he's put out so far. Just keep on doing Teebs', you're doing it great.

- Chris Cobcroft.