the record6:16
The Ninja on this record
At 128 the pulse is straight and unhurried, yet the energy sits up at 9, and you can hear why: everything is compressed toward the low end, kick and bass locked into A-flat minor so the top end feels dragged along rather than leading. There's a hook — a short, clipped figure that repeats without ever resolving — and the arrangement mostly refuses to decorate it.
That restraint is the point. It works as a utility record in the plain sense: drop it third or fourth, while the room is still deciding, and the groove does the persuading. Nothing here reaches for transcendence; it holds a line and keeps holding it. I'd play it, and I'd play it early rather than late.