Bearing in mind the producers involved, it was inevitable that Two Fingers would produce an instrumental version of their critically-acclaimed eponymous debut. What was perhaps less inevitable is that a twelve track album would become a twenty-two track instrumental record.

Amon Tobin and Joe 'Doubleclick' Chapman have provided instrumentals to the ten vocal tracks on the original record and then doubled up with another ten new instrumentals, all as glacial, exhilarating and hard as the beats on the original release.

The pair met when Tobin lived in Brighton and bonded over an interest in music that ran way beyond the boundaries of 'electronica'. In Montreal they applied production techniques associated with UK styles like drum & bass to the template of hip hop; it was an experiment with explosive results. When MOBO-winner Sway (now signed to Akon’s Konvict label in the US) heard what was brewing he was so taken with it, he flew straight out to Montreal and recorded seven tracks with them, showing a harsher, more serious side to his personality whilst offering wry social commentary on everything from the way young Black men are treated ('What You Know') to crazy girls who do too many pills ('That Girl'). The remaining rhythms were voiced by sometime Missy protégé Ms Jade and dancehall legend Ce’Cile. A couple of instrumental rhythms were added and this, the first stage of a continuing project, was complete.

'Two Fingers' is a project unlike anything that any of the three main players has ever made before, a unique, utterly uncompromising, brutal and beautiful record that could only have grown out of the UK and the internationalism of those involved. If it’s not hip hop as we know it, then nor is it drum & bass or grime. Like all the best music it transcends genre to stand on its own – icy, transcendent, brilliant.

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