As The Nextmen Brad Baloo and Dom Search’s long career has produced numerous high caliber style and sound clashes. The Nextmen have remixed London Posse, Public Enemy, Blackalicious, Morcheeba, and Groove Armada, collaborated with Plan B, Ms Dynamite, Alice Russell, Ty, Fat Freddy’s Drop and honorary Nextman Dynamite MC, and toured the globe as festival favourites, curating exclusive sets for everything from MTV to Cannes. This year’s collaboration with Eva Lazarus, ‘Rudegyal’/’Afterglow Dub’, was supported by BBC 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq, Nemone and Huey Morgan, 1xtra’s David Rodigan and Jeremiah Asiamah, and was Jo Whiley’s ‘Infatuation of the Week’ on BBC Radio 2. 

Teaming with Jurassic 5’s Chali 2na, who guested on The Nextmen’s ‘Pound for Pound’ album in dueling with Gentlemen’s Dub Club; Brit reggae legend, the perennial bubbler Tippa Irie; and the decks executive that is Krafty Kuts, ‘Chicken of the Sea’ casts its net across the dancefloor. A surefire means of getting waistlines wound (“the rhythm makes the women want to contort their bodies”), aided by subtle guitar licks and a sample hooking the crowd like fish to bait, this stepper is made even hotter on the remix with slamming pads. Chali 2na returns for the digi-hip-hop of ‘Combination’: skittering around the ‘floor in a propeller-like motion, smooth baritone taking center stage as standard (“check the rhyme like a Tip-Phife-and-Jarobi song”), and a sampled hook writing its own headlines.