Sweet sweet vocal Chicago-house pureness by Tevo Howard featuring Rick ‘Poppa’ Howard on vocals, reminding of the early Beautiful Granville days. A highly emotional and intimate track which the label is honoured to have aboard. Label head Paul du Lac on remix duties delivers two stripped-to-the-bone jackin’ trax for devastating club abuse, one vocal version, one instrumental version.
Lady Blacktronika shared for us an entire EP for free download on soundcloud with three new tracks, idiosyncratic soul singing, straight grooves, the ineffable feeling deepe house. The EP appears to Sound Black Recordings with the catalog number SBPROMO2012.
Madteo serves up his debut album on the Finnish imprint Sahko. With a deep love of hip-hop, boogie and beatdown running through his veins, the NYC-based Italian has never been a conventional house producer, and sure enough, he’s made a thoroughly unconventional album. But Noi No doesn’t jump from one style to another so much as suavely weave a path between styles, creating its own eccentric sonic language the process; what’s more, it’s brilliantly cold and dissolute, as if Madteo has really absorbed the rarefied Scandinavian chill of his new label.
‘Quarter Turns Over A Living Line’ is the long awaited debut album by Raime. Moving away from the sample-based strategies that characterized their early work, Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead have looked increasingly to live instrumentation for their first full-length work, mounting intensive recording sessions for percussion, guitar and strings before painstakingly piecing the album together at their home studio. The gothic and industrial signifies in their music remain, but more submerged and oblique than ever – no less pronounced as influences than jungle’s rhythmic dynamism and doom metal’s oppressive weight or aspects of techno, modern composition and dub. ‘Quarter Turns Over A Living Line’ is the first original artist LP on Blackest Ever Black.
“Ornamented Walls” is the most intense, brutal and, in many senses, most substantial work from Dominick Fernow’s Vatican Shadow project yet. Released to coincide with his first tour of Europe, the album incorporates the live mix rehearsals of “Operation Neptune Spear” with tracks made in their aftermath, recorded straight to tape and mastered by Matt Colton at Air Studios. Anyone familiar with Fernow’s live set-up will recognize the distinct nature of this material — making use of stems and partial tracks separated into a cassette system which is then re-layered and mixed, effected with electronic processing. In short — Fernow uses his tape machines like turntables in a mix, weaving a hazy and intuitive narrative of sounds that never quite head in the direction you expect, all imbued with an almost feral attitude that’s exhilarating to witness, their limitations and their mechanical machine qualities used to devastating effect. Side A features all three parts of “Operation Neptune Spear,” originally made available in a measly edition of 17 cassettes and sold at the first-ever Vatican Shadow live show in L.A. back in May 2012. Side B features an additional 25 minutes of previously-unreleased work made in the aftermath of the show and using the same set-up, including an astonishing revision of “Cairo Is a Haunted City,” dis-assembled and re-wired, lending it a shortwave quality that’s nothing short of revelatory.
The heavily sought after “Ghosts Of Chechnya” cassette finally sees a digital release. Vatican Shadow is unstoppable at the moment, his alchemistic beats and military themes marking him out as a singular talent. This LP champions the sound of Vatican Shadow, with its dubbed-out, reverberant noises, that make him stand out among his peers. The aptly named “Voices Came Crackling Across A Motorola Hand-Held Radio” is another beast, where chugging kick drums meet ominous pads and crackling static. “Chechnya’s Ghosts Loom Large In Death Of Former Spy” is another fine example of his creative ability to mould techno into any shape he sees fit; but it’s the filling spaces made up of eerie melodies and stripped beats, like “Snipers As A Breed Tend To Be Superstitious” which make his recordings so enchanting. Highly recommended as usual.
John Daly is back to feel after a series of awesome releases on his 1track label. Here is a 4 track ep with beautiful dreamy tracks on Feel Music imprint.
Toby Tobias makes his debut on Burek. Running away is a classic house peak time tune with a 90’s bass line, wonderful melodic synth stabs and a vocal sample which at its peak simply drives people crazy on the dance floor. Tres Mal wins the listeners almost instantly and has all the requirements to become a hit. Cleverly made arrangement, fat bass line and high quality production are filled with an exquisite vocal of Toby’s close friend Be Atwell. On remix duty we have Croatian house talent Homeboy a and Liverpool’s John Heckle.
Rush Hour present a new EP including two remixes by Andres and The Oliverwho Factory and a new original track by Recloose. Andres remixes ‘Electric Sunshine’, which originally appeared on the Saturday Night Manifesto EP in 2011, into a laid back and smooth house track for which Dez is so well known. The Oliverwho Factory touches up Magic, which came out earlier this year. Recloose swings back into party mode with his new track, ‘Chamois’.
Release from Nyra on Freund Der Familie imprint. A bass-heavy and shuffly monster of a track, “Like This” is bound to ignite any dancefloor, “M For Mother” is equally good with killer chord stabs and a heavy sub bass, while Sven Weisemann rounds the release off with a characteristically deep remix of “M For Mother”.
“A live DJ set celebrating the inauguration of James Olsom II as club treasurer, performed at the Hawktree Golfclub, Bismarck North Dakota in the summer of 2012. Over 2,5 hours of intense pure raw rockin house in all its forms, with no attempts to smooth out the moments of pure unhinged madness that drove the bar insane and gave more than a few old hoochies feelings they never thought they would have again. Hey Gopher, just gimme me a paira dancing shoes, a paira ladies and a paira medics!”
This tasty sampler featuring two Music Box inspired edit tracks is a prequel to some very nice things ahead. First up is Derrick May’s edit of Let No Man Put Us Under. An edit that he did in the late 80s, which was directly inspired by his trips to the Muzic Box, where he would hear Ron Hardy play the song. One which marks the direct influence that Chicago had on Detroit dance music. On the flip we find a track from another child of the Box, Gene Hunt. ‘Sound Drome’ is an amazing building drum track that totals over 13 minutes. This version takes direct influence from the Muzic Box and Ron Hardy with the acapella intro that Ron used to play as well. The real insanity starts 8 minutes into the track when the tempo is pitched down (and then back up). The kind of madness that only Ron would create on the dance floor.
Lux Rec brings on the 11th release. Four finely crafted musical pieces to dance to and for your own private cinematic experience. Join Murphy Jax on a trip of post apocalyptic nightmares with unknown enemies and dangers lurking behind the ruins of a doomed society.
HotMix Records whit the eighth release, featuring a track by Merwyn Sanders of Virgo Four. The EP includes remixes by Nicholas, Max Essa and K&M.
The Astrodynamics EP further demonstrates the shared intuition for rhythm and texture that Chicago duo Hakim Murphy and Ike Release have jointly showcased as Innerspace Halflife. Arising on the white label Episodes series, you can’t help but feel impressed from the lead track “Metropolitan” which stealthily expands into a deep groove of analogue patterns and spacious, horizon wide waves of luxuriant synths whose hypnotic powers can’t fully woo your attention away from the excellent procession of rasping drum sounds that drive proceedings forward. Flip over and the tables are turned, with the swampy textures of “Hidden Mist” looking to intoxicate from the off, raw percussion poised tautly fighting for prominence amid the growing presence of other worldly, cosmic melodies. “Cold Fusion” presents a darker, more scattered sounding side to the Innerspace Halflife palette, with nervous jazz influenced keys darting in between the crawlspace between the loose, crunchy drums.
Scenery is the new record label of Stu Robinson, and arrives with a stated focus on promoting talent from the UK’s north west. The debut release from the unheralded Bantam Lions is notable for pairing both original productions with remixes from John Heckle. Liverpool’s finest exponent of rough hewn analogue jack turns in a notably bewitching blend of exotic melodies and rugged drum programming for the remix of “Control Tower Observations”.
Use of Weapons 5 lands noisily in your back yard with five house marauders hotter than Salma Hayek eating a hot apple pie. Five different artists bring the bacon: label heads Deep Space Orchestra remixing themselves, ex-Cosmic Boogie overlord Asok, Perseus Traxx, Other Worlds and Wet Play executive board member Ruf Dug.
