Lionrock – An Instinct For Detection

Whoa how is this not more sought after. It's Bentley Rhythm Ace vs Big Beat Fatboy Slim and really listenable from the singles to the album tracks. Funky Brassic style stuff.

Besides the album cover, when you see a track name like "Wilmslow Road" (which is a major road in Manchester, UK where Justin Robertson once lived on), and when you hear the dialogues at its beginning, chances that this album ain't British are slim. In fact, other dialogues from various Sherlock Holmes movies are heard throughout the whole LP.
About life on Wilmslow Road, he said : "It was all car alarms going off, and break-ins. It had a constant aura of petty theft. People'll say hello to you then rob your car." Maybe that's why he put many noisy, sometimes unleashed sounds such as the beginning of "The Guide", the tribal drums and alarms of "Don't Die Foolish" and the menacing techno beats of "Peace Repackaged".

Several tunes are heavily mentioned by the late 19th/early 20th century jazzy atmosphere of the aforementioned Sherlock Holmes era, namely :
- "Wilmslow Road", with its smooth melodies and chunky beats
- "Straight At Yer Head", combining jazz instruments with a hip-hop tempo featuring the cool vocals of MC Buzz B
- "Snapshot On Pollard Street", probably the most relaxing song of this CD
- "Fire Up The Shoesaw", fired up thanks to the big beat style indeed.

These songs contrast to much raw, darker compositions such as :
- "Peace Repackaged", whose beat pattern and industrial sounds reminds me of The Chemical Brothers (if you cut the vocals)
- "Death Valley Clapperboard", coming back to the roots of techno. Personally my least favorite track as it sounds too raw for my taste.
- The aforementioned "Don't Die Foolish", I can totally imagine these sounds coming straight from a factory.
- "Bag Of Biros", another techno tune with crazy background industrial loops.

You also have "Number Nine", featuring smooth breakbeats and various threatening sounds. However, the best part begins around 1:50 with this sort of siren. It's very addictive.
I'll mention "The Guide" once again since it has some unbelievable trumpet samples which can be heard from 1:45 onwards.
In brief, these are both my favorite choons from this record.

"An Instinct For Detection" is a very eclectic release which makes it easily recognizable amongst the many big beat releases that were released over the years. It does have unique and mesmerizing sounds that will make your playlist more awesome.

this album rocks. that is all, really. just get it. i don't think its as good as other people say... chem bros/prodigy blow Lionrock out of the water for me, personally. but this is kind of like the subterranean stuff that was going on parallel to those acts at the time, and it's well worth listening to. if i'd been aware of it at the time, i'd probably be much more convinced it was one of the best. now listening to it 30 years later, i tend to think there are a few good tracks. "fire up the shoesaw" is a 10/10 track for me, that really puts Lionrock in my mind as all time big-beat. the rest of the album is a bit more tiresome to get through honestly, with some good moments but at this point it's just kind of boring. does that completely contradict the first sentences of this review? look I'm not some rocket scientist. what is a review? you want me to deconstruct this review box? I'm just some drunk guy listening to albums and sharing my ing thoughts.

Quite simply one of the best albums I've ever heard. It's fun, it's creative, it's varied. I love the industrial hook of "Peace Repackaged," I love the stuttering guitar samples of "Fire up the Shoeshaw," I love the brutal percussive barrage of "Bag of Burros," I love the relaxed yet tribal style of "Don't Die Foolish."

The fact that this album manages to stay consistently good over an hour and ten minutes is absolutely mindblowing.

Brilliant album, Lionrock only did these two albums, and they are unique and visionary still way ahead of all the tosh that comes out under the "Dance" genre today

This is high quality house/breakbeat album from Justin Robertson and friends which, at time of release, was caned hard by DJs 'in-the-know'. In of commercial success it was probably overshadowed by offerings from The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers but it certainly withstands comparison to the best offerings from those acts for the period in question.

Where the breakbeat / bigbeat acts of the time (1995 through 1997) wandered down the harder rock path, Lionrock embraced a more thoughtful laid-back approach. They produced an eclectic mix of house, dub, breakbeat, hip hop and reggae. The closest album in feel would be David Holmes' excellent NY-influenced 'Lets Get Killed' but the Lionrock offering is a distinctly British affair. Lionrock went for the melting-pot approach, something that produced a genre-twisting leftfield album instead of an easily- packaged genre album.

Trackwise you can hear intelligent breakbeat suitable for a late 80's rave (Number Nine, Death Valley Clapperboard), spaced dub (Depth, Snapshot On Pollard Street), reggae-style preaching (The Guide) and bouncy house (Fire Up The Shoeshaw) and the rest falls in-between but definitely out to leftfield somewhere. Note that the title and the audio samples linking the tracks refer to Sherlock Holmes stories, and provide a wee head-trip as the album progresses - Holmes was a noted of narcotics ;)

Definitely one for the collection this album rewards the discerning listener. Do not by, stop here and spend some time!

Really I can not understand the mark to this album. "3.6!!" This is one of the greatest albums of the decade! Almost that is my opinion.

From the hard industrial dance oriented sounds of tracks like "Peace Repackaged", "Death Valley Clapperboard" & "Bag of Biros", to the jazzy downtempo tracks like "Snapshot on Pollard Street" & "Morning Will Come When I'm Not Ready", they made an incredible exercise of stile.

What to said of the incredible voice of Mc Buzz B on songs like "Straight at Yer Head" or "The Guide", the funny sounds of "Bag of Biros" or the incredible classic rock soud of "Fire Up the Shoesaw".

If you don't have enough with all that, it comes with a second free cd with old material, remixes & b sides, including the vocal mix of "Fire Up the Shoesaw", and another fantastic electro-rock track: "Call a Cab".

This is an album to reclaim. While "Dig your hole" (The Chemical brothers), "Fat of the Land" (The Prodigy) & "You come a long way, baby" (Fatboy Slim) sold millions of copies in 1997 with very similar ideas, Lionrock's "An Instinct for Detection" is getting forgoten because they did it one year before them.

10 / 10