Finland’s hardest working DJ Lil Tony is no stranger to people who spent the last 15 years with house music. Part of Nu-Spirit Helsinki, the powerful Future Beat Investigators and the driving force of the city’s pulsating club scene, this man did it right from start to finish (no pun intended). Recently, Tony started to flex his muscles as a solo artist as well with recordings for Innervisions, Versatile or Mood Music and most of all the inspired jacking re-work of Arthur Russell’s Treehouse that the RB office is still jealous of. Blindfolded we would have declared on oath to listen to a missing Ron Hardy rework. But to move on to pastures new, The Underground Sound of Helsinki EP is also a kind of a lost gem with its roots house approach. Three big tracks from Lil Tony: Mona evokes gentle feelings of rough classics from the vaults of Steve Poindexter, Armando and Mike Dunn or all the other cats living in oblivion – ruff, rugged and raw. Saturday Morning is a perfect mood builder and does what straight house music does best, while Employee Only spreads as much optimism and hope as it multiplies those feelings of melancholy just house can evoke to make sad people happy. Subterranean vault music with a fine ear for the action.
With smashing contributions by electro lord Legowelt from dirty brown The Hague and bleep addict Garçon Taupe from the bourgeois slums of Amsterdam, Narrominded presents the fourth installment in its renowned Split LP Series. Both sides of this Split LP comprise a whole EP in length, and the contributions have in common that they are both deeply rooted in electro music. Side one brings Garçon Taupe – wittenburg ep with some Commodore, amiga influenced electonica with a touch of acid. Split side is for Legowelt – land rovers in astrophysics ep. 4 tracks in the well known Legowelt style… West Coast disco, electro jack shizzle.
Superb techno/dubstep mixtures from Sigha dropping an understated and ice cool 12″ for Hot Flush. Rawww takes influence from the technohouse constructions of Sheds EQd project on the A-side with dub chords synced around slick sub bumps and crafty rhythm programming, achieving nearly the same levels of swing and flex as the Berlin auteur. On the flip Hold Your Heart Up To The Light switches up to a fragile dubstep construction, like a crystallized reminiscence of Scuba or T++ and Untitled#2 finishes on a kicking nautical trip, sounding like a Ben Klock cut played through a flooded Berghain. If youre into Dettmann, Shed or Scuba this is right up your street!
Creme Organization round up their impressive team of disco and house mutants for a fairly crucial look at some of their consistently awesome output from the end of this decade. With a roster including James T Cotton (aka Dabrye in jackin’ house mode), Jamal Moss (under multiple pseudonyms like IBM and Africans With Mainframes), Legowelt and D’Marc Cantu you can expect expert teachings from the real raw skool of jack. Particular highlights come from IBM on ‘Music Box’ with 10 mins of sleazy tripping oddness, warehouse reverberating acid from Legowelt on ‘Zompy Land’, sh*t-yer-pants Chicago house from Polarius, and an exceptional contribution from James T Cotton on the funk chopping kicker ‘King Of The Box
STL is the production alias of Stephan Laubner who has been releasing material under a variety of pseudonym’s on labels like Perlon, Smallville, Styrax and his own Something Records imprint over the past decade. Stephan’s productions are like fine wine, they develop, mature and get better with age. His past releases have gained support and charts from Detroit luminaries like Derrick May & Theo Parrish to the Berghain collective, Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann & Steffi. His recent licensing of “Silent State” on Cassy’s new “Simply Devotion” mix on Cocoon, Ame’s Fabric mix, Steve Bug’s “The Lab” and earning the number 1 spot inGroove Magazine’s chart all speak volumes about the level of love and passion he puts into his productions. With Stephan’s “Check Mate” he pays homage to a sound we simply adore, a musical conceit only a select few understand, hand crafting his sounds with a variety of analog signal processors, vintage synthesizers and a loving touch reminiscent of the early Deepchord years. This is one to treasure, made for repeat listening!
Mr Kaos debut on Clone Loft Supreme (already counts releases on DFA & Rong under his belt) with the best and most mature one on this Clone series yet!! ”Kosmischer Ruckenwind” (or cosmic tailwind) is a magnificent piece of psychedelic kraut-inspired disco with trippy guitars and spaced out fx. Its sounds almost as if Manuel Göttsching, Pink Floyd and Kaos were jamming in the studio. Twelve minutes and not a minute too long. And if that weren’t enough there’s the ‘Rough Version’ on the flip that ups the original’s analog-ness to even higher levels. Timeless release.
Stroboscopic Artefacts is proud to welcome on board singapore-based Xhin (Meerestief). With his production wizardry he has been crafting ominous cuts of cutting-edge techno. “Fixing The Error” is an enormous peak-time club killer. Xhin knits together the sinister sound of the revolt of the machines. High frequency drum machines and ferrous sub-bass synthesizers are working urgently against the clock. Close your eyes, dissolve, step into dystopia. You are transported into a post-human cityscape where strobes reflect off smelting metallic sounds and deafening alarms wail. These warning codes, layer upon layer, fashion a vision of a Metropolis gorging itself on sprawling noises. The flip side, “Link” has no narrative. Instead, this deep, brooding slice of dub-techno is composed of pure atmospheric pressure. The undercarrige slithers and slinks, interrupted by crackles of lightening and prehistoric rumbles. The result is a construction created in a cold palate of pyrite grey: bubbling, spherical and terrifying. This is dark. This is urgent. This is Xhin.
Traditional minimal stripped techno tracks. Think Robert Hood, DBX and the likes… done with a nice modern twist.
Vivace is a project of Stephen Hitchell (cv313, Echospace, Intrusion) and is a unique hybrid of deep house, dub, jazz, & soul, a sort of new school/old school fusion which pays homage to Chicago house heroes like Chez Damier & Ron Trent in their Prescription era but with a modern twist. This project is the continuation of his previous Soultek material initially featured on Germany’s Force Tracks & Force Inc family of labels back at the start of the century. The title track in its original form is a sub-aquatic journey through space and bass, as deep as you would come to expect from an Echospace production but the sound palette has changed, shifting into a world filled with ambience and free form jazz. The use of live instrumentation & vocals are a driving force behind this project and add a depth and soul oceans deep, its like melting in sonic butter. The Soultek mix is a frenzy of edits, funked up and sounds like it could be a schizophrenic’s take on house music, Brendon Moeller dives deep into soul, shifting and morphing the original into a proper late nigh house jam you could only imagine Derrick Carter or Theo Parrish dropping at the wee hours of the morning. The closing Intrusion mix gives the original a frosty lime green haze best absorbed while inhaling, real trippy stuff. This first release has already earned countless play from Francois K and in its inception (as Soultek) was hailed as “Jack’s Echo — The Future Sound Of Chicago” by De-Bug Magazine, Germany.
Classically rooted Neo-Detroit electro from Mick Welch, initiating his Elektrosouls Recordings with a Stephen Hitchell-mastered set of machine rhythms. Welch certainly knows his B12, Black Dog, Juan Atkins and Kenny Larkin tracks, as he neatly approximates a style in between each of his predecessors with crisp and robustly robotic rhythms alloyed to piquant synthlines benefitting from Hitchell’s mastering clarity.
Fat City Recordings and Prime Numbers present the much-anticipated album “In The Red” by Trus’me. Since the release of his debut “Working Nights” in 2007, Trus’me has been doing just that, both DJ’ing in the best clubs around the world and putting in plenty of late night studio sessions alongside some heavyweight talent. The result has been a rapturous dancefloor response to his eclectic dj sets, an impressive roll call of quality remixes (inc LCD Soundsystem, Amp Fiddler & Dabrye ) and not least the production of his long-awaited second album “In The Red” “Working Nights” is regularly held up as “one of the finest deep house and disco albums to come out of the U.K in years”, but this was just the beginning of the Trusme sound. Since then he has become increasingly adept and inventive at taking on the sound system roots of reggae, soul, and disco, blending them with house and techno,to create a hypnotically radical sound.
Compilation of Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir’s best work from his own Frictional label (and some choice output from 7th City) over the past 15 years. This limited edition 4×12” set comes with an exclusive two track 7” (only available with this pack). The label Shake started brought us some of the deepest, funkiest and most diverse techno of it’s time and has been surprisingly overlooked by many. After a few years hiatus, Shake is now back and will be recording and releasing on Frictional again soon. This compilation includes all of the classics like Arise, Frictionalized, Get A Feeling, My Computer Is An Optimist , The Floor Filler, as well as an unreleased track The Other One. All tracks have been carefully re-mastered, breathing new life into the original recordings.
Paul du Lac with his follow up on his limited Clone X release. 3 tracks of which 2 tracks that are a mixture of the good old Dj International days, Joey Lewis and K-Alexi Shelby and a little bit of that Dutch Unit Moebius sound. Clone J.F.D. is not about inventing new sounds… its just about cool tracks that deliver some classic grooves, good vibes and fun… thats what mr Du Lac delivers.
Four track EP by label owner Aroy Dee. The first track Once U Loved, is warm and emotional, with slowly evolving strings topped with mysterious whispering vocals, reminding to older Blake Baxter material. 2nd track, Tears is a fierce and sexy Chicago-house influenced dancetrack, with a solid baseline, steady beats and lush keys. First track on the B-side is Lift Me High, a downtempo dreamlike analogue house classic with haunting strings and vocals of miss Salvador, merging Larry Heard and G-Strings with an Italo-disco kind of atmosphere. Last on this EP is Soul Spark, an atmospheric techno track with the raw energy of early Relief-releases and the psychedelia of Dance Mania.
Killer house track with a raw edge. Levon Vincent beats the original with his remix that has a steady dirty house groove with fat claps and layers of sounds. Monotone groove but with a lot of tension.. another club hit for Levon!. Anthony Parasole and Fred P deliver a technoish version and Jus Ed doing a light mix compared to the others with more housier vibes. Stand out release!!
Jason Fine with his debut album on the sweet Kontra Musik. Mr Fine known for his releases on FXHE (Omar S his label) comes with a great hybrid between some sort of Dance Mania Chicago house (bass lines and drum programming) and Detroit techno (including the intense and overwhelming layers of strings) and stirs things together to his own unique blend of techno music.
