A twelve-minute samba doido do-over by the Chicago house don, a long-time fan. ‘A toughened groove and gorgeous swirls of synth and pad embellishments, as Ron’s remix takes Azymuth’s futuristic disco even deeper.’
Marvis Dee – Midnight Dreams [VG003]
Although best known for producing alien electro, Jeremiah R also makes evocative deep house under the lesser-known Marvis Dee alias. Here he pops up on Voodoo Gold with a mini album’s worth of woozy goodness. The Rotterdam based producer brings us again a record full of warm, tape driven tracks. Highly recommended for lovers of a mixture of lo-fi 80’s cassette machine funk and groovy synth boogie.
CCO – Road To The Stars [PF014]
Photic Fields usher a new name into the fold, Switzerland’s Contra Communem Opinionem aka CCO. The Lux Rec and Mathematics alumni arrives with The Road to the Stars, five tracks of his trademark acid elegance. The ferocity of the 303 has been sheathed, percussion pared down with lush chords and deep warmth being the focus. House is the foundation from which CCO builds. Those time honoured sounds support cascading melodies and fragile keys for a 12″ that borders between armchair abstraction, floor funk and the night sky.
Massiande – Freedom EP [PHONICAWHITE016]
Phonica’s white label series returns with a real deep house excursion by Chilean producer Massiande in the form of his ‘Freedom EP’. The title track ‘Freedom’ launches the EP attempts to recreate an aural scenery of flying exploration centred on a spacey synth line and an almost Detroit techno bassline. ‘Be With Me’ starts with an almost Mr Fingers-esque groove before melodic elements take over.’Straight’ is more of a straight-up dancefloor track with obvious elements from US house from the 90s, clipped Chandler-esque beats, nagging stabs and a vocal sample ‘Gonna take you to another land, where there is no race’, going straight to a place where you can allow yourself to be free on the dancefloor. Many ’90s U.S. American House and Garage influences go through this track, which brings us to the final track, the epic ‘Ode To A Tortured Soul’. Deeply melancholic with an end-of-night feel with its own flute solo, channelling Frankie Knuckles ‘The Whistle Song’ or Flow’s Bottom Line classic ‘ Another Time’.
Florian Kupfer – Post Present [PRIVATEPERSONS003]
Florian Kupfer returns with a three track EP on Private Persons. This 12inch tells us the story of the beginning of Florian’s career – his travels, dreams and of course love. Title track ‘Post Present’, recorded for the first time five years ago get’s its first cut into wax. Eerie, other-worldly voices reach over a kicking, distinctively Kupfer-esque rhythm track. ‘ I Can’t Love Life Without U’ is a dub drive through retro-futuristic heartbreak and ” an ambient tip into the subconscious.
Jasen Loveland – Acid Series Vol.1 [IT038]
Jasen Loveland is a doctor of medicine, with interests in house music and computer dating. This is his recorded debut. Recorded in LA and mixed in Detroit at the IT studios. To celebrate 10 years of No Way Back (a regular party in Detroit…and beyond), the label is launching the Acid Series, a series of records on Interdimensional Transmissions inspired by the No Way Back parties.
Richard Fearles – Sweet Venus [DRONE011]
Richard Fearless from Death In Vegas on his own imprint with two tracks in his distinctive wavey and trippy style.
Lake Haze – Love In Lux [UTTU075]
After debuting on UTTU back in 2013 Lake Haze returns to the fold with 2 epic 90s Goa-Inspired-House-Jams for the freaks. Backed with an incredible bleep n bass remix from DJ Boring.
DMX Krew with Yuri Suzuki – 7777-013 [7777013]
7777 presents its 13th release featuring DMX Krew and Yuri Suzuki. Side A brings you straight house attitude. B side strips it down and adds the acid. These songs are perfect for your record bag.
VA – Import Export [CHALICE002]
After a long hiatus the Fasaan Recordings crew finally emerges from their basement to break out a second volume of their Chalice imprint. Functioning as a looser side vehicle to Fasaan, Chalice is a home for rawer and more uncompromising side projects of the Fasaan crew and their extended family. Honing in on a murky zone of cheap-sounding machine rhythms and punchy boogie-influenced proto-house sounds, the Chalice style is in your face and then out the door “just like that”: take it or leave it. As the title “Import/Export” suggests, the contributions for this installment have been gathered from such foreign places as Copenhagen, Bandung, Tallinn, Manchester and Dublin.
Black Devil Disco Club – Berlin Disco Club EP [CTC369.002]
One of the most unconventional techno tracks which were released during the last years. Catchy pop like and unbelievable dark at the same time. H-Friend starts at the peak and then progressively reduces itself into an intro that is actually the outro of this song. (Black) Devil like totally reverted – the start could be the end, the end could be the start. Remixed by Benedikt Frey. A typical project by Berlin based label Private Records that results in a lot more than the single ingredients. A fantastic follow up on the new Closing the Circle label. Get some magic as long as it is available.
Elitechnique – Disco D’azur / Riva Riviera [BAP094]
The Rotterdam duo Elitechnique arrive at Bordello A Parigi with two cuts of groove dipped electro disco. “Disco D’Azur” starts as it means to go on. Juddering bass and crystalline synth lines open into astral avenues, chords cascade and flow before they build into triumphant highs. The flip keeps the party fires burning. “Riva Riviera” takes its cue from “Disco D’Azur”, bold and broad bars with clean percussion with just a touch more mirrorball romance. Keys intertwine, embrace and twirl away as Elitechnique lead you from dusk to dawn.
Holy Ghost Inc – Walk On Air [ISLE003]
Originally released in 1990 the Sun & Moon Mix of ‘Walk On Air’ has taken on near mythical status as a benchmark record that brought together strands of Ambient, Deep House, Techno and Trance. The B side sees the original Amphibious Carbine mix joined by two previously unreleased Dubs unearthed from the original DAT tapes.
Philipp Gorbachev & The Naked Man – I Don’t Give A Snare LP [ARMA016]
Arma presents the debut Philipp Gorbachev & The Naked Man album. Philipp Gorbachev, the Russian musician and DJ, has been throwing killer parties and making some of the most innovative and exciting electronic music to come out of Moscow in years. In 2014 he released his debut album Silver Album but when invited to perform a live Boiler Room he had something else in mind: a band scenario. The resulting concoction was not something locked into a 4/4 beat but rather a much more organic, groove-based sound with funk-strutting bass lines and live drums that rolled and flurried around the beats that jumped around leading the charge of the songs along with Gorbachev’s Damo Suzuki-like vocals. Taking that experiment into the studio, ‘I Don’t Give A Snare’ is a wild ride that jumps genres, switches paces and alters tones frequently. The opening ‘Goodman’ exploding in intense rhythms and heavy, spiralling riffs that at times recall Sabbath but the ever-shifting drums and gargling electronics give a wonky freshness that feels impossible to place into genre. Whilst Gorbachev cites a range of influences from Beck to Blind Willie Johnson as being core to him, the primary motivation is the live nature of the project itself. ‘The main influence is the constant live experience we have as music players and performers. I want to get the most out of every party, every jam, and every dancefloor.’
Borusiade / The Sixteen Steps – Promises & Infatuation [CITI022]
Cititrax present a split EP by two massive talents, Borusiade and The Sixteen Steps. Borusiade, originally from Bucharest, Romania began as a DJ in the early 2000s and then started producing music in 2005. With a background in classical music, she combined her love of raw electronics, obscure themes and melodic lines to create her own signature sound. She has released on the Cómeme label as well as Corresepondent. Infatuation and Confutation are dark, moody and intense tracks that catch you upon first listen. The flip side of the Promises and Infatuation EP features The Sixteen Steps, the brainchild of George Lanham who cut his musical teeth DJing and running events in the south of England. We have been listening to many of his tracks endlessly for a while now. Signals From The South and Promises On The Run are both immaculately produced, hypnotic, dance floor killers. They are sparse ebm meets smoky warehouse techno, and offer a wonderful contrast to Borusiade’s layered emotive tracks that reminisce of an East Village club in the 1980s. Themes of infatuation, appearances, and anonymity appear throughout this EP from the music itself right through to the cover art.
Delta Funktionen – Junior High School Excursion To The Parallel World [RAM-X-10]
Following a near two-year hiatus, Delta Funktionen resurfaces in order to invite us on his Junior High School Excursion To The Parallel World. While the title evokes images of bad 1980s teen movies, musically the Dutch producer has delivered a double-pack full of what we would describe as “proper” techno and electro. That means thrusting rhythms, bold and restless basslines, intergalactic electronics and melodies that sound like they’ve been beamed down from, well, a parallel world. There’s naturally plenty of subtle variation – compare and contrast, for example, the booming rhythmic intensity and creepy melodies of “Torpedo” and the winding late night acid trip that is “Stingoperation” – but Delta Funktionen keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the dancefloor throughout.
Techno Bert – Neue Dimensionen [MNQ094]
Originally released in 1990 on Doremix Records, Techno Bert was the studio project of Robert Passera and Stefano Cundari, co-owner of Memory Records and mastermind behind some italo disco classic names like Hipnosis, Koto, Faxe. “Neue Dimensionen” was developed on Siouxsie & The Banshees’s well-known guitar riff of ‘Happy House’, in a techno crescendo, where the duo would have enjoyed inserting as many samples as possible by stopping only when the capacity of the sampler Akai S1000 memory would be full.
Black Seed – SBZ004 [SBZ004]
Sign Bit Zero’s next output is Black Seed, the alternate identity of Turin-based DJ and producer Matteo Viani. The project is a showcase of his excavations into the realm of electro-tinged techno and live experimentation. Using the sharp edges of a raw, tribalistic robot funk sound as tools for crafting rhythm, Black Seed generates unsettling yet grooving scenarios, basemental bangers of danger dunked in smoke and hypnosis.
Jasper Wolff & Maarten Mittendorff – The Bunker Podcast 146
Staffan Linzatti – The Dynamic Dispatch [FIELD025]
Staffan Linzatti is back with a well balanced spaced-out techno triple pack on the ever evolving Field Records. Ever since ‘The Event’ we knew that our reality was becoming more hostile towards our presence in it. The very fabric of it was changing, and we would either have to change with it, or change our reality. A program called ‘The Dispatch’ was created as a means to preserve human existence through an infinite number of simulated universes. A simulation in which each universe would serve as a world for future humans. A world indistinguishable from the ‘real thing’. As we write this, ‘The Dispatch’ – your future as humans – is being coded and compiled. During execution, our existence will end – and your new world will replace ours. Our story, our memories will live on in your reality. Our creation, embedded deep within the ‘The Dispatch’, will be a brave tale of perhaps our greatest achievement – if not our very last.
