UNKLE: "Psyence Fiction" (Mo Wax) There may never be another album like this - or another UNKLE album, for that matter. You could call this the Mo Wax label's supergroup, but it goes a lot further than that. Label boss James Lavelle and DJ Shadow have spent the last three years collaborating with Thom Yorke, Richard Ashcroft, Beastie Boy Mike D, Metallica's Jason Newstead and a host of others to create this blueprint, an album which takes Shadow's Entroducing album as the starting point and goes as far forward as it possibly can. It's not the future of music, but it's darn close. Obviously, the superstars like Yorke and Ashcroft command all the attention. Lonely Soul, recorded during The Verve's mini-split, has Ashcroft touching the bases that would form the foundations for Urban Hymns, with Shadow providing a beautiful string-heavy backing. And again, it's Shadow's touch of Satie piano which lifts Rabbit In Your Headlights, rather than Yorke's gloomy and rather bored vocals. However, when lesser-known collaborators like Badly Drawn Boy (on the excellent Nursery Rhyme) and French singer Atlantique Khanh (on the mesmerising Chaos) come into play, UNKLE really ignites with the pleasure and innovation that we're looking for. But when Shadow takes a solo turn on Unreal, all expectations are confounded and you're left reeling.
This is where UNKLE really makes sense. Psyence Fiction is audacious, ambitious and quite remarkable. Few albums will ever come close to matching its scope and focus, no matter how much talk is talked. The men (and women) from UNKLE have created the only blockbuster of the summer that really matters.