SWARVY is a producer from Philadelphia who has been releasing music for over a decade now, perhaps best known for his collaborative projects with Ioji on Fresh Selects, or his solo material on Paxico. The last time we heard from him was last summer, when he gave us a dub EP called Smoked Out Dubs Vol. 1. Now he is back with a new EP, Karate.

When you’ve been around as long as Swarvy has and worked on as many varied projects as he has, sometimes it can be nice to sit down and make music with no restrictions or expectations, just getting back to the roots of the type of music that you love. That’s the vibe that comes across on Karate. As you work your way through the five tracks, you get these songs that are really easy to listen to which move from funk to hip hop to bossa nova to R&B to jazz and back again. In a lot of ways, it feels like SWARVY is out to make an EP of music that he or other producers might like to sample and flip. Karate would be a great crate diggers’ find in that regard. Regardless of the motivation, what you have is five instrumental tracks with great grooves, great musicality, memorable melodies, good flow and a lot of variation across the EP. It’s the type of solid project that you love to hear from someone like SWARVY, where it just feels like a nice return to form and reminder of what a good musician he is.

Karate isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but that’s okay when you’re dealing with a talented musician like SWARVY. This is incredibly funky and undeniably fun to listen to.