Back and cooking up more funk and flavor with his second album for Rekids, Mr G proves he’s still the king of rhythm with ‘State Of Flux’. Packing more history than most of the top current producers put together, Mr G has been fine-tuning his breed of music for two decades. Described by the man himself as “it’s all about a bassline”, his music takes the formula of a ballad and the movement of reggae.
Warm Up Recordings presents Oscar Mulero’s new album: Black Propaganda. Nine new tracks that reflect a new twist in his sound, going deep into dark territories; a black and white approach to dance electronics, where shades and echoes and drones are mixed with obscure rhythm treatments that go from slow tempos to more uplifting beats. Sonically speaking, his sound has become simpler, with less elements but better sound design. Less is more. All tracks have a common feeling, like a soundtrack for a sad European landscape: mental, industrial, repetitive and definitely non-melodic.
Elbee Bad aka Lamont Booker is another great underground house pioneer from the formative days of NYC house in the late eighties. ‘The True Story Of House Music’ is the first time Bad’s catalog gets compiled for re-release. Although the best and most prolific part of his catalog is his late 80’s and early 90’s output, Booker never stopped producing (and dj’ing). Elbee Bad aka LB Bad aka The Prince Of Dance Music aka Lamont Booker aka The Voodoo Man, aka Lord KCB aka BAD currently lives and works in Berlin where he continues to work on music as well as producing and running his Bad’s Label.
Blackest Ever Black is releasing the first ever vinyl edition of Gareth Williams and Mary Currie’s Flaming Tunes. This remarkable album was recorded at DDM and Cold Storage in London after Williams had left This Heat and returned from the first of several trips to India. It was officially released on cassette in 1985, before being bootlegged on CD more than a decade later. The bootleg in question, the Japan-issued After The Heat, described the Flaming Tunes pieces as ”This Heat’s final demo recordings”, much to Gareth’s understandable dismay – after all, the album marked a conscious attempt to create a music with a different mood and texture to that of This Heat, one which would allow the full expression of his eclectic and distinctive tastes. In 2009, twenty-four years after the original cassette release and eight after Williams’ death, aged 48, from cancer, Life & Living Records – an independent label operated by his close friends – released the first and definitive CD edition of Flaming Tunes. Where possible, L&L went back to the original master tapes to achieve the best possible sound quality. The album – is one of the most unique, poignant and poetic ever to emerge from the British underground, its visionary power matched only by its playfulness and intimacy – has never had a life on vinyl.
Tin Man presents an ambitious but club ready album of 303 centric dance tracks. 8 cuts that ably followup his breakout single ”Nonneo” from 2011 which launched the popular ”Acid Test” series on Absurd Recordings.
‘You & Me’ turned out to be an amazingly fresh and versatile album, and in good old Uncanny Valley tradition, a highly collaborative affair that goes far beyond the deep house description, making it very well fit for both home listening and dancefloors worldwide. A track like the dark and dirty ‘Heteronomous’ with Uncanny Valley fellow Sneaker lines up alongside the bright and sunny anthem ‘Punta Del Este’ together with Belgiums San Soda. Artists like Christopher Rau or Mr Raoul K add their trademark sounds but there is always that specific approach of Jacob Korn that connects the tracks.
Full album from the astonishingly talented JuJu & Jordash. This time crossing their more psych side with their proto-everything electronics. Continuing their distinctive synthesis of spaced-out jazz un-standards, murky dub and hypnotic electronics, Juju & Jordash exploit the triple vinyl format to launch a mission bound for the innermost depths of their sound. It’s obvious the writing and production have reached a new level in their exciting evolution. Now it’s time for the music to reach an audience beyond just techno and house.
The new CD from Big Strick ‘Resivior Dogs’ featuring Omar S, Generation Next and the return of the legend Reckless Ron Cook. As Generation Next sets the tone for a outer-Galactic experience with Sequence 11 the stage is set for pure deepness only products of Detroit can bring. Along side Omar S on Family Affair Big Strick & Generation Next (family as well) has orchestrated a masterpiece sure to please the dance floors worldwide.! And Big Strick brings to you the return of Reckless Ron Cook a true pioneer of the Techno Movement on Night Moves a serious banger that will take your breath away.
Not long after his debut full length, Michigan resident D’Marc Cantu serves up his next album on the ever-excellent MOS Recordings. Though essentially a house and techno producer, American Cantu often goes further than most, calling on a world of influences to ensure his jacking productions are as far away from standard as possible, yet still do damage on the right dancefloors as have previous EPs on this label, Nation and Crème Organization. His latest offering, A New World, aims to capture, detail and relay many different stories from within the re-born city of Detroit. Across the course of eight tracks, many different moods and styles are explored from dark and abstract to more synth lead and serene. There are plenty of squelchy acid lines and frantic percussive workouts, but so too are there pockets of slower, deeper, dubbier introspection that speak of mystery and intrigue as does the city of Detroit itself.
Just von Ahlefeld and Julius Steinhoff aka Smallpeople with a double pack full of forward thinking deeper house experiments. From functional to crazy wild and weird… which is a perfect combination for an 8 tack album. The debut album of these two young lads with baseball hats not only honours and delves into a sound that already peaked some fifteen years ago, it also hones and elevates it, without everfalling into the Reynoldsmania trap or being oldgold retold.
Psychemagik are back and this time it’s a limited edition issue of their Healin’ Feelin series edits on CD. Ass Nation, Make it Mellow, Diamond Star, Upskirt, Milky Way, Boogie Drome, For Your Love and Aldeia De Ogum are all present and correct and are joined by two previously unreleased and totally exclusive edits, Andalucia evokes images of sun drenched skies and dusty Andalucian mountains and a fresh drum heavy reworking of one of the duo’s first ever releases, on Discoteque Wreckers, Runnin’ Pt 2, that seems bound for dancefloor glory.
Mannequin presents an 8 track LP from full-analog-synth quartet S U R V I V E aka Adam Jones, Kyle Dixon, Mark Donica and Michael Stein, considered as one of Austin’s (TX, US) most important live electronic mainstays.
Minimal Wave return to their self-professed “First French love” In Aeternam Vale with a second LP-shaped trawl through the band’s sizeable archive of cassette only releases. The Brooklyn imprint first introduced us to the work of the hugely prolific Lyon band with an eponymous LP of remastered material in 2009, and Dub Under Brightness proves to be just as important a release. The label points to an article on the band originally published by the Douche Froide magazine in 2002, where the journalist nails their appeal in the opening gambit – “There are bands that have been acting ruthlessly in the shadow for years, in a completely confidential manner, then one day chance (but does chance exist?) makes you find one of their recordings, listen to it, and at that moment you could kick yourself for not having discovered these soundscapes earlier and you try to find all of them”. If you haven’t indulged in the sounds of In Aeternam Vale yet, this eight track selection makes for a perfect introductory primer.
Degada Saf was a transgressive-dada-ist musical combo coming from Veneto, Italy. Degada Saf played a synth-electronic music, a kind of involved no-disco with no-sense lyrics in esperanto. Their music suggests a peculiar mixture of post-modernism synthesized electro assaults, new wave’s imaginative minimalism and pop art aesthetic vision. “No Inzro” makes constant interferences between rigorous avant-gardism, alternative music styles and colorfully plastic electro pop. The spectrum of musical imagination reveals a lot of good surprises, notably with the opening theme “La Rhumba de Shang Hai” which directly gives the tonality of the entire album: kitschy retro-popish ambiences based on dancing minimal hypno pulses and efficiently cold melodies. A groovy and captivating electro experience and a pretty decent introduction to the band’s very own musical universe.
Some warm and especially funky treats on Johannes Paluka aka Iron Curtis’ longplayer-debut on the Hamburg-imprint Mirau Musik. ‘Soft Wide Waist Band’ is Curtis’ entrance into the world of long players and the first of its kind for the Hamburg imprint. Of course, the man has earned his four-to-the-floor stripes navigation between deep house and soulful techno leanings, but he has also managed to steer clear of genre silt. Thus the task of creating a coherent, yet amusing album without blinkers is passed with distinction here. It streaks all the places and spaces in the past, present and future: the basic knowledge of engineering skills hones in New York, Chicago and Detroit left its traces here as much as a touch of British freewheeling mixed with the flow and indie poetry of a German country boy who has heard of electronic pop music before.
From North Yorkshire, England, more classic ’88 UK dark acid house from Mantra, a full-length lp on white vinyl.
A double album by Orgue Electronique aka Brian Chinetti on Creme Organization. What lies here before you is sculpted out of the blood and tears of 5 years of life, and all the dreams, imagination, tristesse and longing that goes along with it. A mesmerizing double album: wholly matured and further enhanced by collaborations with luminaries like Robert Owens, Alden Tyrell and cult hero Fre2k. It’s warm and generous, made up of real emotions, of moments frozen in time and of the impassioned cries of a soul on the run. To finally let it go after so many years is – for all the parties involved – a strange yet exciting moment, not unlike the birth of an elephant baby…. out of a human female.
PRPLX’s entitled Fabric Of Space explores the deeper side of the Breakbeat spectre. Clever drum programming as well as going in a bass shakin’ direction, it reminds us of early Bluenote & Speed days but definitely with a modern touch. These tracks are another testament to PRPLX’s love for the Breakbeat. Also included here is the roadtested Taiga track which starts of deep and hypnotic but surprises you with the harsh amen drop, raw synth and dark male reggae vocal.
Matt Cutler is back with his fifth album, which is an impressive feat in just five years of releasing music. Galaxy Garden starts off on a more esoteric tip with the tropical electronica of “New Colour”, in its sunshine chimes. By the time we get to “Lying In The Reeds” we’re up to a house tempo that harks back to the softer side of early Detroit. It’s when “Crystal Caverns 1991” starts up that we reach the most blatant distillation of old-skool; kicking off a breakstep beat with sweet but punchy 90s synths, the track cuts into a deadly rave motif without so much as a pause in the beat and it’s like being back in, er, 1991. Every track reeks of originality, whether it be the surprising track structures, the superbly detailed production, even the evocative imagery that the music conjures up.
It’s entirely typical of a revered producer such as former Skull Disco boss Shackleton that some new material from the Berlin based producer should arrive without the necessity for PR fanfare that far too many musicians require. It’s even more typical of Shackleton that Music For The Quiet Hour is just so damn epic in scale and execution. Whilst this digital version doesn’t convey the full brilliance of Zeke Clough’s artistic contribution in the manner the vinyl or CD versions do, it does allow you to focus fully on the music. Largely formed of mesmerizing material produced on an Italian drawbar organ module the producer has been experimenting with for the best part of two years, theses 16 tracks are bristling with the sort of all consuming basslines and unique percussive melodies that Shackleton has made his own and true fans need little more reason to indulge.
