The release of the new DJ Shadow record has been met with a lot of shrugs and head scratching. The music writers and geeks of the world have expended a lot of column inches and pixels wondering how one man can continue to produce music that simply builds on the same ideas he introduced with Endtroducing but not really evolve them in any appreciable manner.

In response, I want to point all of them towards a group that is taking that instrumental, hip-hop-inspired sound to new levels: Art of Ballistics. This duo is a cross-continental collaboration between local producer (and the man behind Lowatt Recordings) Will Watts and his friend Greg Reynaud, a musician who records under the name Behold The Profit and is currently living in South Korea.


Their collaborative work, as heard on their EP  Broken Mornings, and especially on its opening track "Unspoken Truths" pays heed to Shadow's cut-and-paste genius but adds much more urgency and steam into the mix. And there's a reserved element to it that pushes the spoken word sample into the background rather than letting drive the track. It's all about that beat, that splashy almost furious beat that will add a little extra pressure to the gas pedal and a jolt of adrenaline to your bloodstream. The more you know about this band, the better.