Italian duo Life’s Track with raw, analogue house sounds that is physical as well as emotive. The first track here is ‘Stone’, a hurried house jam with raw and splintered hi hats racing over broken sounding drums as urgent synth stabs fill in the spaces left behind. It’s live sounding and loose, ghetto in texture and truly arresting in nature. The b-side starts with ‘Velocity’, another over-driven bit of house with non-stop claps chattering over slower, purposeful kick drums deep down below. Nagging synths slowly shape shift and draw you attention away from the physical percussion, making for a nice duality to the track. Lastly, ‘Invisible Symphony’ is a stripped back techno banger with heavy kicks, a great little hook at its heart and turbo charged synths slicing through it like lasers.
With prudent timing comes yet another artful release from Greece’s Nous contingent, this time courtesy of Manchester’s Moodcut who muses succinctly on the invisible overlap of Chicago and Detroit’s aural heritages. The Tame Cats EP delves deep into the industrial overtures of each with the melancholy sparseness of sound that characterizes the brutally beautiful aspects of man-machine-music.
Swedish producer Sean Dixon once again contributes with his characteristic sound. Classic analogue synths and drum machines used in his very own way, with the result being three killer melodic and warm tracks, all with short vocal parts on top. Fellow swede Sankt Göran wraps things up with an excellent floor friendly remix of the title track Believe.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The increasingly impressive Lobster Theremin label seems to be developing close ties to Hungary’s emerging electronic music scene. Having previously released a superb EP from Budapest-based Imre Kiss, they’ve now turned to one of the country’s more established names, S. Olbricht (an alias of producer Martin Mikolai). There’s much to admire on this intoxicating four-tracker, from the alien electonics and hustling drums of leftfield techno opener “Fi”, to the crackling, off-kilter rhythms and ghostly chords of “RPSTS”. Elsewhere, Mikolai demonstrates his deep house nous on the warming “IIX1”, and fuses twinkling melodies, creepy chords and a throbbing low-end groove on the similarly impressive “Veuns”.
California-raised Johannes Auvinen made his name blending hypnotic techno with the distinctive electronics of acid house. His most recent album, 2012’s Neo Neo Acid, moved further towards the sounds of Phuture. Ode, his seventh full-length, sits somewhere in between, delivering a sequence of deep, hypnotic grooves that utilise acid lines not to create energy, but as melodic hooks. With the addition of his own half-whispered vocals on a number of cuts, the result is an atmospheric set that feels like the soundtrack to a hazy after party. For the most part, it’s very impressive, and has a genuinely weary, late night mood that’s strangely attractive.
Can you feel it? Time moving faster and faster. ”The next thing” is always more appealing than what you’re holding in your hands right now. But is it better? Well, perhaps. Perhaps not. At this pace, can you really tell? So. Just like Magritte’s pipe wasn’t a pipe, this is not a record. This is an invitation. An embracement. You see, this round disc may be white, but it is not empty. It is filled with our creativity. Our time. And now we would like you to fill this plain, white sleeve with your creativity and your time. We want you to share this with us. To be a part of this release. To be apart of our SELF. This music spoke to you in some way, and now we want you to speak to us. The language is up to you – do whatever you feel like! Some of you will paint, some of you will print, some of you will do things we couldn’t even think of. All of you will be a part of the movement. A movement against the one-sidedness of the producer-consumer relationship. A movement against the hurried Zeitgeist. A movement against the grain. We are the Swedish Electronic Liberation Front. We don’t have customers. We don’t have followers. We only have members. And you’re invited to join us.
The Wicked Drummer EP sees EDMX turn in four floor-targeted weapons spanning U.K Garage, 2-Step, Acid, House and Breaks rife with his signature nifty synth work, multifarious rhythm-structures and taught, effective bass tones.
