Surfacing earlier this year with two 12″s on Planet E, the anonymous Korrupt Data now deliver a debut album for Carl Craig’s label. Korrupt Data’s music straddles the divide between Kraftwerk and Model 500 without the crazy frenetics of Drexciyan electro. Said to be made with ‘old kit’ this 11-track album is spread across two discs and it’s very much geared for the dancefloor and sounding distinctly Detroit. Highlights include the vocoder electro space pop of “Inter Arrival”, the glitchy tones and rigid beats of “Photons, Protons, Microns, Mutrons” and the emotional techno acid of “Memory Loss”.
An EP done by Ukrainian producer ‘Recid’ – 3 catchy techno bangers accompanied by straightforward remix done by Saint Petersburg based techno producer Sanys. The EP is named after one of the key elements in universe and Recid’s home city Kirovograd which is full of uranium mines.
Home Invasion is the label from Real Tone man Franck Roger, a man whose career has scaled the full depths of house music over the past decade or so. Evidently seeking a new challenge, the Parisian’s new imprint promises to adhere to a vehemently underground way of working, with every EP released on vinyl-only terms and produced exclusively on analogue equipment.
Rawax welcomes Mr. Rick Wade back on Housewax. The Detroit Master delivers again 4 great tracks for our sublabel. Four slices of Detroit House music in the wellknown deep sultry Rick Wade vibe.
Scenery label boss ASOK steps up with the next release, and that it comes with a remix from Dutchman Boris Bunnik in his Versalife guise is the icing on the cake. This is heady and original dance music from Scenery that continues the motion that has been set with the first few releases.
Nice moody deep melodic techno tracks on Detroits Moods & Grooves records. Ploiesti Romania area childhood friends Andu Simion, Dan Gheorghe and Bogdan Ardeleanu are inspired by Detroit’s house sound and Berlin’s techno. Their resulting collaboration is best described as “deep techno” and their first release is appropriately on Moods & Grooves known for pushing both envelopes. ‘Les sons de la Lisière’ is a reflection of the beauty and silence of nature found in the suburbs of Ploiesti.
A-side with pounding worked up and almost gnarly techno by SVN, feat. vocals by Paleo aka Paleologos Koukouvelis. Flip-to-B and dive into a ultra deep chorded stabber by AU (SVN and DNL) for those hours hanging in the air, also this side features Paleo on vocals – giving it a spiritual transit – from the energy in the room when produced.
Boston based production duo and room-mates John Barera & Will Martin continue their journey into sculptural, storytelling House music, with their debut album on Dolly – ‘ Graceless’. The pair’s work has found a wider audience since the success of ‘Reality’, which found its way into the hands of Berlin’s Steffi, and acted as a central gear and in her 2013 Panorama 05 Mix. John Barera has been a firm disciple of the House and Techno world for the past 10 years, and after launching Supply Records in 2011 has brought an elegant, resoundingly universal mixture of underground club tracks to the fore. A fresh and fruitful partnership with close friend Will Martin grew out of the pair’s rapidly growing studio, and the latest results can be found here over the 8 cool, classy and refined contemporary House tracks.
Experimental house and techno producer Community Corporation joins the Argot family. Predictably, pinning down the sound of Aquifier is tricky. Contrast, for example, the dub-influenced deep house looseness of “Sunken Water Table” – all tumbling keys and strange noises – with the clanking rhythms, mutant bass and ghetto-tech inspired swing of “Crystalis”. “Patent Lies” and the more Detroit-influenced “Subterranean Limestone”, meanwhile, sound like a tougher, more out-there take on the heady sound of the Mood Hut and Future Times camps.
It’s all about the dub mix on this next installment from LIPS, unusual for this nascent black label from an un-named though not too hard to guess infamous band of London party promoters. This one is a semi official release on top trumps smashing 180g vinyl. A secret weapon for a select few over the last year, this extension edit by Jonny Rock with a simply sublime dub on the flip side, marks a return to form from a label we feared had left us after one chart smash from Adesse Versions.
The fourth installment of the classics series features two of the label’s most successful artists Kenny Dixon Jr. and Rick Wade. KDJ’s untitled tracks were previously issued as a limited pressing so here’s your chance to get one if you missed out the first time. Longtime and well respected deep house soldier Rick Wade is featured on the flip side with two classic deep house offerings from his first appearance on Moods & Grooves.
It’s been a little while since a fresh injection of refined minimal techno was issued from Vlad Caia, but now the Romanian stalwart is back with a fresh pair of subtle gems for Amphibia, with whom he dropped the Projections EP back in 2012. “Voluspa” is a cyclical workhorse powered by undulating bass synths and swirling pads with a decidedly cosmic flavour to them, working just enough dubby flourishes into the mix to keep things fluid and warm. “Behind The Black Meadow” by contrast takes a slender funk to task with the finest slithers of percussion and a yearning line in melodics as expressed through heavy doses of filtering for a truly subconscious slice of micro house.
Xosar’s new release for Valcrond Video marks the onset of a darker, more dungeons & dragons oriented point of view. The four tracks feature both propulsive, doom-laden beats and expansive drum-free dream spaces. These sounds, appropriate for perved-out DJs and depressed teens alike, trace a narrative of pursuit, captivity, and erotic exsanguination. Held in a stone tower, a prisoner’s fluids are harvested for carnal application, before he is finally allowed to drain and find release in euphoric fields: bare dead trees, empty veins.
Deep and tripping acid backed with some jazzed out drumworks on the flip. Producer and boss of Mathematics records, Chicago’s Jamal Moss a.k.a Hieroglyphic Being is a one-off musical explorer. Jamal’s music takes cues from the EBM and House that played a huge part in the city’s musical underground in the late eighties and early nineties, notably Ron Hardy and Adonis, but also Industrial, Avant-Jazz and Noise. His releases, much like his music, have straddled House labels and the more leftfield avant garde electronic imprints with ease. However his deeply held Afrofuturist intent and the discipline of his radical designs set him apart from the pack. Always moving forward, his music is an ever-evolving transmission from his mind to our bodies, or as he sees it, a form of meditation that the supple, tuned listener will enjoy immensely.
45 ACP who has seen prior releases on the Odd Frequencies label presents a dense five tracker that is equal parts dj fodder as well as dips into the low tempo trip tracks. This one crosses all lines taking you to bizzaro world and back to the club again.
In 2011, Julia Thompson (DJ Black B1tch) gave me a TDK SA90 tape of a spontaneous live jam by Insync recorded in her flat in Forest Hill, South London in March 1991. She had found it in a drawer when clearing out stuff. She gave it to me to listen to simply thinking I might be interested in hearing it. Of course I was, particularly because the date on the tape immediately told me that the session was recorded more than a year before the release of Insync’s debut, the seminal Storm on Irdial Discs. In fact Storm was recorded before this session but not released for more than a year after it. The A side of the cassette is a live jam comprising a bass-line/repeating melody and one other four-note motif. Other than that, Lee Purkis rinses a Yamaha SH101, SPX90, Roland 909 drum machine and some delays, to create a 43 minute journey that passes through beautiful elegiac ambient passages to crashing drums that had me nodding my head to the point that I had to force myself to sit still because of the shooting pains in my neck. Insync was accompanied by Paul Chivers aka Ramjack. Ramjack was playing an Ensoniq Mirage containing samples of himself playing various percussion instruments. I listened a few times to see if there were four 7+ minute sections that could be released as an ep. I thought there were, and here they are. Lee Purkis gave his permission for Third Ear to release the cuts, and the whole jam (available as 3eep201409). Next I contacted Stefan Betke at Scape Mastering to ask if he would listen to the tape to assess whether he could create a master that would sound good enough on a big sound system. Together we decided that he could. The sound quality of these cuts is a testament to Lee Perkis’ sound engineering and to Stefan Betke’s mastering. Judge for yourself. Guy McCreery.
Antinote house Maestro Geena returns triumphantly with a 4 track ep that weaves the deepest melodies with the strongest rhythms. ‘Niagara galleries’ is pure deepness with it’s mesmeric panpipe lead while ‘Lunar substance’ proves that the parisian producer is also a master of the esoteric & ambient. ‘Gotta wear shades’ is filled with the dark memories of lost basement parties and ‘gamma sector’ is a fine example of the best of Acide maison.
