Flore is the sort of DJ who you can imagine takes regular leaves of absence from the decks, given she’s so keen to get dancing with those she’s in the process of rocking. Her fizzy fusion of electro and bashment is one to draw in cosmopolitan crowds, her skinny synths producing ache-making basslines set to B-more stop and go. As Flore seizes both ends of the sound sphere, the French femme generates frown-erasing funkiness and obnoxious behaviour on the cue of her vocal guests.
Funky obnoxiousness is served raw yet piping hot on Pum Pum Gal, an ass-focused joint voiced by ragga baritone Thaistylee and Joyce Muniz playing eyelash flutterer, and the madcap soundclash The Test. Flore’s love of dancefloor’s push and shove flaunting tribal instincts doesn’t forget to keep the rhythm rolling amongst electro-bass stun shots. Rodney P does his glass-raising mastery of ceremonies to steady if unspectacular effect on the nip and tuck, rub-a-dub stylists Get It On Get It In and We Rewind, the Riddim Killa winding up the digitally-enhanced dance with customary dictation bordering on arms-folded apathy.
Probably the biggest talking point of Raw will be Flore’s potentially kamikaze coverage of Gary Numan’s Cars, replicating the synth eeriness to a tee but putting them to a rumpus of B-more chopping, moving from cold sweat to hot flush. Shunda K sounds suitably robotic in lauding automobile security, but her latter two pennies worth, handing out regular rudegirl rhymes, should have been excluded. A brave effort, that adds too much in its tribute. Still proving a love-hate figure, the Yo Majesty hellraiser undoubtedly makes tracks her own with that wearing queen bee attitude of hers – the routine sexual frankness touching up the otherwise poppy (and comparatively unenergetic) Feel Me – though she bites her tongue long enough not to upset the title track.
Dance music currently enlists tinny, robot-training infuriation as a honeypot to grab listeners with, and the pinging, skipping electro house squeaks Flore wrings out of Raw has that irritating irresistibility that flicks away at ears like a dog with fleas. Do It poses as big a threat with low end slurps, the light-hearted MC Chickaboo hired to supply some cavalier stanzas on a 4x4 romper.
There’s also some serious austere techno and deep four-track rave Flore needs to air – the midpoint of LWFRQ and the nasty #107 stripping down to a creditably sobering minimalism. While their place in the playlist plays a distant cousin to all of the jumping around that surrounds them – almost the equivalent of a noodly solo - applause should be reserved for the style switch-ups showing shared yet expansive genealogy, capably breaking out from the close-knit community without exposing token extroversion.
A versatile release, bass mechanics explored without forgetting the album’s common causes, and something you can both show off to as well as tacitly going about your wilin’ out.