Fort Ancient Records is a label/collective of producers out of Cincinnati that started releasing music a couple of years ago. Just this past May, they debuted a new series of releases called Fort Ancient Airlines. The idea is that it’s a short collaborative effort, with a new guest serving as “pilot” for the EP. After traveling to Rochester on their first flight, the crew is back to head to Long Beach.

The core of Fort Ancient Records are producers Homage CVG, Samuel Steezmore, Waldo From Cincinnati, Dren AD, and Phonopage. For this trip, the captain is DBLCIN Magazine founder Matt Scheer, along with Meg Wolske, who also works with the magazine. They help point the plane for the West Coast, where we get the Fort Ancient crew’s downtempo interpretation of G-Funk. It’s nothing too unusual, but it’s well composed and provides us with some enjoyable downtempo funk to vibe on. The group has great chemistry together, to the point where you can’t tell which producers are contributing what, or when friend of the label Prospek hops on to help make some beats. It’s short and straight to the point, so there’s just enough time to get a general feel for the grooves, and then it’s already time to put your tray tables up and prepare for landing. I would be curious to see what this series was like if they took more time to explore their destinations, since it feels like it ends just when I’m starting to get a sense of their musical ideas.

Fort Ancient Airlines: Long Beach is a solid second entry into this series, but we’ve still only gotten the shortest of glimpses into what this series could be. In the space allotted, we get a general tone established that might evoke the destination, but we don’t get enough space to go beyond that.