One Eyed Jacks label offers a sterling collaboration between Photonz and Tiago Miranda. Both Portuguese natives, they’ve dedicated the tracks to remote, desolate beaches outside their capital city. ‘Ponta do Mato’ is a a sublime, supple Baleari-tinged groover with warm traces of classic Acid House done in deeply romantic style, while ‘Cova do Vapor’ is more disco-jacked and psychedelic with frothy cosmic synthlines.
Sweet release by Andreas Saag dropping some hot piano driven house on the a-side that has a bit of that Nights Of The Jaguar vibe with its staccato string melodies. Jazzy keys all over combine with a solid drive. Strong track!! A classy deeper cut on the flip side
Arttu aka Lump would be jamming in his Lisbon studio with Detroit’s Jerry the Cat! These tracks are the perfect first collaboration between Arttu, Jerry the Cat and Clone records!! Playful and funky old schoolish house tracks with the joyfull vocals of Mr Cat all recorded during some live sessions in Lisbon where they both reside. Arttu went back to some intuitive drum programming for these live sessions and made simple funky drum machine patterns around nice hypnotic basslines. Vocals and additional percussion still have some of that live feel after the tracks have been arranged and mixed.
Ferrispark Records present a new release from Scott Ferguson. On ‘Alright’ heavy bass and beats eventually mutate into a smooth late-night house jam, with a Kenny Dixon Jr sample. Side B is laced with chatter, cheers, and claps, accompanied by chords, strings, sub-bass, and disco loops.
New Levon Vincent on the cultishly adored Novel Sound label. The A-side is a modern tribal House masterpiece, shaking the drums into a mammoth, speaker-owning subbass while layers of star-screaming synths expand and envelope your mind with jaw-dropping psychedelic dynamism. Then there’s the B-side. ‘Revs/Cost’ opens the account with steppin’ snare punctuations and rib crushing subs before a lashing dub chord rifles thru the whole thing, syncing with a flooded subbass to spine-chilling effect. For measure there’s also the staggering ‘Pivotal Moments In Life’, a life-affirming piece of House music if we’ve ever heard one.
Composing an entire electronic album around the notorious 15th Century Cult Of Assassins, New Jersey based producer Jorge Velez, better known as Professor Genius, has created a unique and ambitious piece of work, under the guise of “Hassan”. Largely based around layered atmospheric Arabic-styled synth work and sparse percussion throughout, Hassan employs an entirely electronic palette to bring listeners into a secret world filled with darkness, drama, triumph and chaotic dissonance. The release includes also remixes by Steve Moore, Marcos Cabral and Steve Summers.
The Londinium EP is the latest release on Uzuri Recordings and welcomes Chicago Skyway back to the fold. Musically, he keeps it closer to his Windy City heart. Hakim Murphy remixes the track and his rework retains the drawn-out essence of the original but brings a whole new hips-and-shoulders groove to the track. On the flip, Traffic plays out a very simple analogue groove over a clapping 808 percussive pattern. A slow, static-filled monster of a track – not abrasive for the sake of it – instead switching between muffled warmth and the hiss of synths working overtime.
After their debut, Achterbahn D’Amour (aka Iron Curtis & Edit Piafra) return to Absurd, with 2 new tracks plus a massive remix from Skudge.
This time it’s XDB delivering the goodies for Dolly, as always pushing the boundaries between house and deep techno. With this 4 excellent cuts XDB is taking the label in even deeper territories. Even though they are very well playable and will easily rock the floor, taking it up to somewhere between jupiter & mars, XDB’s tracks are more than just proper dj-tools. So well-crafted, deep, harsh and hypnotising, but always firmly keeping floor contact with minimal yet funky drum programming, exactly as this kind of music should be. To top things of, Brooks Mosher on remix duties delivers a Detroit inspired remix of ‘Sunda’.
Rawax with another strong ep done by the young talented Unbroken Dubs. Raw analogue sounding techno tracks with a nice lively feel and funking drum machines!
All the tracks here are based around the 909 – thunderous kickdrums and sharp, hissing hi-hats that cut through the mix. Still, there’s a broad range of sounds, from head-down, fists-clenched warehouse workouts with an industrial edge, to more melodic tracks with Detroit references aplenty. Good honest techno with a real raw live feel.
The Band PolyRhythmic is compiled thoughts on rhythmic structures between Kate Simko and Tevo Howard. Here featured is the first appearance of PolyRhythmic who are proudly presenting the theme track in 3 versions. The band is also currently in studio work hoping to release more material, which includes coming EPs.
From the Signals imprint in the North of England comes two suitably rough and tough cuts of British house/techno from Liverpool wunderkind John Heckle. This is how techno and house should be made! Machine driven; raw, moody with heart and soul.
Selected by Acido Records’ Dynamo Dreesen, five tracks feat. the talents of Bjørn Torske, Sensational and Tim ”Love” Lee all remixed and prod. by DJ Sotofett. In the times of cheap loops this 12” purifyes the old school dee-jay attitude with the coherent limitations of record jugling, remixing, archive digging and intuitive live studio recordings.
NDATL continues with it’s latest release ABACUS pres IDrum “Bang This Djembe.” “Welcome To The Party” is a classic analog track, with smooth chords and driving drums. Also a bonus drum dub is included for our layering DJ’s to drive danceoors into a frenzy!
Persnickety Sounds is here to funk-ti-fy your world! In this era of Nu-Disco, Space Disco, Cosmic Disco, Disco House and shit, there must be a beacon of quality to light the way and lead the faithful back to a place where good grooves matter and realness is holding court.
Mathew Jonson makes his debut on Crosstown Rebels, with the Dayz EP. ‘Dayz’ is a very melodic house-meets-techno affair. Driven by punchy kicks, the track fuses silky synthesizers to vivid keys, with the overall result being a strong Detroit-ish track. ‘Cold Blooded’ is a more static, electro-based house track with twisted melodies, nasty bass stabs and super heavy vintage synth waves in the middle part.
Pomelo presents Alex Cortex’ third album. ‘Kihon’ is a very personal effort, as suggested by the self-portrait on the cover. The carefully elaborated design of this gatefold double LP speaks as a whole and in true minimalist fashion about the passing of time, without ever declaring nostalgia to be a means for itself. In 11 nameless tracks, ‘Kihon’ takes us on a journey through organic worlds of sound that invites us to flow with the music and connect with the feelings contained in it. Concentrating on the bare essentials, the music begins to speak, turning the album into a harmonic whole. ‘Kihon’ therefore is also a return to listening, away from a utilitarian perception of music as a background sound.
Trelik presents OCH, with a compulsive passion for the dying art of crate-digging combined with a love for modern synthesis techniques he manages to put together a 12″ that could easily be described as psychedelic Chicago. ‘Whalesong’ is a pulsating floor work-out which references the US greats whilst building an emotive sub-aqua soundscape. ‘Blind is The Wind’ follows with a sneaky chord driven spoken interlude which creates an air of tension before climaxing into ‘Last Chance Saloon’. This is deep yet driving showcasing haunting vocals with lush chords alongside the original principles of house music and plenty of bass.
ItaloJohnson releases its fourth release. On the long recorded side, you’ll find a house track that can be hardly surpassed in any type in its directness. An unfussy arrangement, a straight oppressive subject and a low flying breakdown compose the A-stamped side. The concrete in-your-face-drumming, piano lessons and stabbing strings combined with the ItaloJohnson charm becomes the (double A) AA-side. Finally, the AA-2 track emotionally rounds up the release with ItaloJohnson’s trademark-sound in which all the brothers and sisters are invited to explore.
The Hipodrome Of Music 