“Hammam Lif Footwork,” reads an underlined message on the again flap of Slime Patrol, Khadija Al Hanafi’s 2020 debut cassette launch. The tagline refers to one of many northernmost cities within the producer’s native Tunisia, named for its historic baths and scorching springs. The geotag is essential. Although footwork and juke are intrinsically linked to their Chicago roots—even because the genres have spawned regional actions in Tokyo, Poland, and the US’ coastal metropolitan areas—Al Hanafi belongs to a more moderen wave of practitioners, like Pennsylvania’s Nondi_, who method the style from a headphone-oriented, autobiographical perspective.
Bolstered by a collaborative lower with Teklife’s DJ Earl, the inaugural Slime Patrol tape was as stress-free and steamy as a sauna session, sustaining footwork’s bass-driven pulse whereas putting heightened significance on melody and texture. Tracks like “Mnaïch’alik” and “Moulaga” wove area recordings and entice a cappellas into dusty jazz chops that may really feel at residence on a Madlib beat tape, percolating for simply over a minute earlier than transitioning into the following lower for a steady mix-like expertise. Over its temporary 20-minute runtime, the album established Al Hanafi’s uniquely poetic voice as a producer. Every tune was as intimate and ephemeral as reminiscence itself.
Slime Patrol’s sequel, which arrived on January 1, 2024, can also be a bricolage of cozy lounge loops, however its inspirations are extra diversified, and Al Hanfi has nixed the seamless segues in favor of fast fadeouts, permitting her to increase her rhythmic palette. She molds Jersey membership in her personal picture on “Rounia,” stretching out a dreamy canvas of saxophone and electrical keys that tastefully muffles her alternative of percussion. The style’s typical gun-cocking samples are pitched up and layered into flurries of cochlea-tickling clicks that sound excerpted from an Alva Noto file, and tender tufts of 808 bass create the feeling of floating. You possibly can dance to the beat, however the tune’s nebulous form is much more conducive to blissful dissociation. Listening looks like being suspended in jelly, uncertain which means is up. “Throwsom$,” then again, is a research in footwork’s ghetto-house roots, emulating its gritty hedonism beneath impressionist piano glissando. Even at its rawest, Slime Patrol 2 remains to be dripping in class.
