artist: Jon Kennedy country of origin: UK style(s): Trip hop, breakbeat, downtempo funk/soul essential releases: Take My Drum To England (2003, Grand Central)

In an interview in 2004 Grand Central Records head honcho Mark Rae told me that despite what many people think his label is basically a soul label, not hip hop. Rae's own music is certainly steeped in soul and there's plenty of GC output that could justify his argument. But if you regard hip hop in fairly loose terms as grooves developed from sampling and looping drum sounds, Jon Kennedy fits the bill. His first album for Grand Central is also one of the finest albums in the label's history.

Kennedy is a DJ but he is also a musician - a drummer in fact - and this is where the album's uniqueness begins. Like Bonobo, instead of just plundering the recordings of others he has also sampled and looped his own playing to construct these tracks, roping in various side players on guitar, piano and sundry other instruments. It's a mostly instrumental and downtempo affair infused the melodic warmth of jazz and soul and some clever funk basslines. There's echoes of 60's pop, too and overall its a record of exceptional depth and beauty. The closing "Waiting For The Sea To Freeze" brilliantly builds layer upon layer of reverberating, shimmering sounds over a slow, hypnotic break before it slowly spirals out of your conscousness.

Call it trip hop if you like, an eclectic and soulful strain of that sub-genre comparable to Nightmares On Wax which bears little suface resemblance to the sounds of the hip hop mainstream. Emotionally, however, Take My Drum To England inhabits a sublime world all of its own.

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