Urban review: Roots Manuva, Slime & Reason

The twists and turns of Roots Manuva's career continue, four albums in, to confound and surprise. Last heard journeying into the abyss on Awfully Deep - less an album than an extended dark night of the soul - Slime & Reason constitutes a retreat, of sorts, from the brink. The music is lighter, with Awfully Deep's doomy atmospheres replaced by sparser beats that allow Manuva's voice more space to breathe; electro dancehall producer Toddla T contributes three superbly jittery dancefloor fillers. At times, Slime & Reason is carefree, almost perky: Again & Again boasts a sunny reggae lope, while on Do Nah Bodda Mi, Manuva plays off an angrily squawking female voice to great comic effect. But Manuva is as preoccupied as ever with questions of salvation and redemption, and Slime & Reason's finest moments come when his paranoid obsessions take him to church, as befits a man raised in the strict Pentecostal tradition. The lilting gospel chorus of Let the Spirit and the doomy It's Me Oh Lord find Manuva stewing in a cauldron of guilt and self-recrimination, the potent authority in his voice lending them gravity and beauty in equal measure.