The newest offering from Luke Hess’ Deeplabs imprint: Warehouse Sessions Volume 1. All four producers on duty here keep the vibe deep and unique, jacking at times while laid back and cosmic at others. Four tracks with a groove firmly rooted in early to mid-nineties Detroit warehouse techno, the results mix analog instruments and machines with a dose of atmospheric dub.
Hoya:Hoya welcomes the multi-talented Tadd Mullinix with his JTC alias. This time round, on ‘Park Days’, he flexes a house side that’s not been seen too often in his career of 13 years. Whether the driving groove of South Brooks, the late night drum machine jam of Argo, Creal’s ever evolving scatter, or the delicate Gallup, ‘Park Days’ is one of those records where everyone has a different favourite.
Eduardo De La Calle has an enormous potential, his love and passion for music, his production and his DJ sets, deep and full of intensity have earned him a lot of respect. Now he provides and excellent follow-up to Analog Grooves #1.
Subwax Bcn is a new born record shop based in Barcelona and run by two swedish music lovers. To celebrate the opening of the new shop they here proudly presents Iceland’s finest ambient/dub producers Yagya! This album was originally released back in 2002 and has since then been a real collectors gemm. It features 10 stunning and timeless ambient/dub techno tracks, recorded in Reykjavik during the frozen summer of 2001.
Second installment on Marco Shuttle’s EERIE is again a 2 tracker by himself. Sticking to the deep cinematic hypnotic signature sound that has trademarked all his work so far, the London based Italian producer delivers 2 long journeys of deep, dubby, Detroit flavoured EDM. Both tracks have a subtle progression, building up gently from an intro initial part to a more ”dramatic” core through very subtly arranged and modulated layers of sounds and subliminal melodic elements.
Sven Weisemann keeps exploring the depths of dub on the 4th release of his vinyl-only Essays label.
Prad Bitt is Adi Dumitra and Toygun new alias, where they decided to explore the dub techno side and this is their first release featuring two tracks of pure dub & techno. Remix duties are covered by Brendon Moeller and Salz.
The Aula Magna team proudly presents the label’s second release, a solo EP by Seph. A mind dazzling odyssey through the artist’s breaks and techno obsessions, exploring new dance realms of his sonic world. On the A side, Temporaria kicks off the record with dancefloor intensity and Reflejo grooves on a funky edge, with layers of modulated dub synths and bells. The energy doesn’t stop on side B, shifting into a more introspective feel: Navi drives forward with its warm glitchy breaks and sets the stage for the mysterious Zoom (Bi), an epic dream that deconstructs it’s melodies over a sci-fi rhythm and ghostly distorted whispers. The journey resolves with the shimmering evolving synths of the digital exclusive track Glow. We hope you enjoy the ride.
After a longer break Mainakustik is back with a release by the labelowner himself, Matt Star. He delivered two melodic oldskool flavoured technotracks called ‘Casionation pt.1 + pt.2’. Its also the teaser to Matt’s upcoming LP which will be released in spring 2013. The EP comes around with a Unbroken Dub remix.
On Luxury Problems, Mancunian producer Andy Stott builds on the knackered house and techno sound showcased in last year’s brace of brilliance, Passed Me By and We Stay Together. The album will contain eight tracks recorded in the last 12 months, with five of the songs featuring vocals from his old piano teacher who Stott hadn’t seen since he was a teenager in 1996, with the opening track “Numb” seeing her looped and layered vocals exuding a cinematic quality. The paranoid, dense, slow-moving qualities that Stott has made his signature remain, but they’ve been toyed with and manipulated, and the vocal elements feel like a calculated gamble – one that has truly paid off. Modern Love go all out on presentation too, with Luxury Problems arriving in a superb gatefold sleeve.
The inspirational Rod Modell aka Deepchord follows up Sommer, his second album on Soma, with two exclusive tracks perfectly laid down in only the way he can, giving us ‘Tonality of Night’. Both tracks clock in over the 10 minute mark as Deepchord takes us on yet another journey through the unfathomable depths of his unmistakable production.
Four deadly cuts of timeless, jackin’ house and deep techno professionalism. OCH returns to his Autoreply home with a new series of split 12”s inviting a diverse group of producers to share a slab of wax. For the A Side he opens with “Deltic” which sets the mood with tough yet soulful chicago vibes. OCH’s second contribution is “Freeze-Thaw” showcasing a deep, hypnotic groove alongside powerful sub-bass, lush female vox with dreamy analogue pads that bridge the gap between artistic creativity and memorable club versatility. On the flip side it’s Romanian all-rounder, The Model. Here he delivers two ultra-phat workouts in the form of “Dungeon Man”, an infectious chord driven floor-burner and “Stancuto” a stripped back, percussive take on the same theme demonstrating his emerging new warehouse sound.
The oldskool hero A Guy Called Gerald with his first release on Bosconi Records. The release randomly arrives in coincidence with the definitive closing of another legend, the place in Berlin that has been a symbol for years of the cultural renaissance of the german capital after the wall, the Tacheles. When Gerald just moved to Berlin, he got his house and his studio inside that very inspiring and artistic place, and as a tribute and homage to his legendary figure, some mysterious writer draw G’s face on the right side of that building with the shamanic enigma above that giant mural “How Long Is Now”. A1 gives the title to the EP and it’s subliminal dark and psychedelic after-hours dope session, while on B1 there’s the shady and sexy atmosphere of “Groove of the Ghetto”, a driving and funky house tune sustained by an ultra fat synth bass and enriched by soulful vocals and deep pads, while on B2 the EP ends wih the brutal Uk bass bonus beats monster entitled “202”. In memory of Tacheles and the good old days.
The new bomb on Echocord Colour comes from Nick Höppner and Scott Monteith aka Deadbeat. Höppner only releases sporadically, but whether it’s solo or alongside Lee Jones as MyMy, his records are always remarkable. The 2 tracks for this release are both peaktime tracks. Deadbeat did the remix.
Having made a name for himself as a heavyweight dub, ambient and techno producer as Conforce, Versalife and Silent Harbour, Boris Bunnik is now branching out into label ownership with a close friend. The imprint will be called Transcendent, will be vinyl only and aims to focus on “deep and abstract mental sound excursions.” The first release is a four track EP from Hexagon, a producer who first appeared with a bonus 12″ that accompanied the release of Conforce’s Escapism album. Now stepping out on his own, the producer delves even deeper into the unknown, into a world of filmic soundscapes, evocative sonic imagery and spacious abstract worlds. Opener ‘Red Shift’ is ripe with intrigue and mystery, like the intrepid explorations of a spacecraft into the deeply unfamiliar whilst ‘Interference’ takes us into the bowls of a spaceship where robots seem to be spinning drills, computers bleep under their work load and all the while a thin and occult drone lingers in the background. ‘Fractional Wavelength’ is a nebulous world of more machine mechanics, this time glued together with a rubbery bass boom every so often, before ‘Permutation’ is the sound of an alien lab in full flow.. liquid drips, glassy tinkles and metallic sparks all send your mind into overdrive as you try to fill in a visual picture of this very real sonic world.
The second of Answer Code Request’s two 12″s for Marcel Dettmann’s MDR imprint sees three more rough techno cuts with 90s influences. A-side track “The Host” has echoes of Shed in its hypnotic metallic snares and looping, malfunctioning synth line. On the flip, the producer clearly indulges his tendencies for 90s IDM with “Thu”, a combination of ambient Aphex style melody and minimal D&B rhythms, while “Mikro” combines a heavily panned line of kosmische-style arpeggio, deep sub-bass and skittering breakbeats.
