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May Chart / Reviews for TTR
From: Tom Baker As usual you'll be able to hear these tracks once uploaded on www.ttrmagazine.co.uk 1. Tech House 2. Techno 1. Pascal FEOS “Flash Back” (Remixes) PV Records 9/10 www.pv-records.de Jean F. Cochios’s remix of “Self Reflection” is bad-ass deep, dirty, warehouse underground house music of the highest order. This is the sort of record that blows holes in the side of people’s heads. With tom toms for a B-Line, snappy, funky as hell beats and a distorted vocoid voice the overall effect is devastating. Later on haunting chords are added to keep the track moving before stripping back into the relentless groove. On the flip Steve Bug gives “Flashed Back” a re-brush into deep, soothing electro house. The production’s nice and the guys in Hoxton are gonna love it but its no way near is forward thinking or fresh sounding as the B-side and nor will it stand out as much. A bloody good choice of remixes from a guy that usually makes full on club techno! 2. Darren Roach and Dave Brennan “Ride the Ridem/Punture the Click” StudioTek 8/10 “Puncture the click” is a well rounded piece of clicky flavoured tech house containing lots of reverbed effects and focussing heavily on very clean drums, however it’s the B-side “Ride the Ridem” that makes this release something a bit special. Once again this track focuses very heavily on the drums but this time there’s a hell of a lot more going on with huge spatial sound effects and drums that continually mutate. The overall feel is like listening to chewing gum bouncing around your mouth. It’s twitchy, springy and very forward thinking. A bold and excellent step forward that really needs to be heard in a club and in the mix to be fully appreciated. 3. Subverter “Now wash your hands” Nonsuch Recordings 7/10 www.nonsuchrecordings.com “Wash your Hands” is a driving, gritty little number with soft vocal snippets and drum elements off-setting the groovy, slightly progressive B-line nicely. As the track progresses a sound really reminiscent of Leftfield’s “Open Up” or “Song For Life” in their mid-nineties hey day presents itself. On the flip “Out of space” is a housier, more bumping feel track but there’s still a slightly Leftfield kinda vibe from it in the form of reggae guitar licks and the “Out of space” sample itself and slightly progressive occasional squelches. It makes me wonder if they did it on purpose, but it’s no bad thing and both tracks bump along effortlessly 4. Avus “Your Body EP” Poodle Three dark slabs of underground dubby house, the main cut receiving remix treatment from Surreal’s Timmy S. Snappy beats overlay a long, brooding b-line with echoed vocal rap. Halfway through it cuts down into a break beat for just a couple of bars before slamming in, with the rap saying “As the bass kicks”. As the track moves on, dark, underwater sounding synth sounds present themselves for a full effect. I’ve heard this on CD and Vinyl and unfortunately the copy I have on vinyl seems to have suffered from some pressing/mastering problems. B1’s remix is courtesy of Woka Junior and Emjay Chemis, which is a bit more bouncy in flavour. This time the underwater effect is on the vocals, this will work well on a late night floor but its quiet repetitive to listen to, finally the original mix sounds really flat and is pretty minimal. Not much fun to listen to at home. 5. Biro “Yard Sale” Odori 22 9/10 As you’d expect from those SWAG boys Duckenfield and Brown this is quite a quirky little number. “Second Hand Funk” Opens the 4 tracker with twangy guitars, snappy drums and the occasional smashing fart noise we’ve come to love from these guys. 80’s Japanese synths are added and the chords open right up to produce a very vibey track perfect for those end-of night moments when you’ve all had a little bit too much fun. A2 uses a similar guitar effect to sound like the Dukes of Hazard playing Space invaders on Acid, “Cletus” on the flip gets back into the drums for a minimal dose of funk. Finally “And Then..” has a melancholy vibe over squelchy, retro b-line. Very clever and a damn-right interesting little package. 6. Zoo Brazil ft Shawndark “Loose Control” Music for Freaks www.musicforfreaks.com 7/10 Three mixes in a very similar flavour are offered from the multi talented Zoo Brazil. The main cut is retro, electro house rhythms and syncopated b-line underpinning a full song from Nanna Martorell. Its hard to work out who all the credit’s are for as I’ve no idea who Shawndark is and the mix titles give the impression label bosses Luke and Justin have had their mitts on this but there’s no other reference to them. Anyway that’s beside the point. The main cut would be good enough a pop song to get in the charts in more favourable times, the B1 is tougher and more stripped down but still has the full vocal and the B2 is another variation on a theme, but being more stripped down and making greater use of the tracks syncopation whilst maintaining a few parts of the vocals looped over. 7. Grim and Manky “3 weeks on the trot” Evasive 7/10 www.evasive.co.uk The original’s a great follow up to Gideon’s previous release on Evasive. Very smooth, dark, haunting, yet bloody lovely at the same time. As with Evasive No 10 it’s asset is its simplicity, Female murmurings float in and out from a warm bottom end and sharp drums. Flip it over and Nathan Coles delivers a suitably entitled “E-Face Off Mix” Which is a booty party little number with an intoxicating bass line that after a couple of minutes rolling along will probably make the not-so head strong people dizzy enough to fall over. Maintaining some of the vocal sounds and then a re-take of the dark chords towards the end, this is one for livelier dance floors. 8. Silver City “Blah Blah Blah” 2020 Recordings 9/10 More Quality underground house from the 2020 stable, a guitar riff house track complete with backing guitars and looped vocal rap that gives the 4 track EP it’s title. A2 “Aire” is a little more stripped down and funky, with similar guitar sounds, a few reverbed effects and a light scattering of progressive sounds to give it some dirt. B1 “Boulevard” is fat ‘n funky almost break beat affair with live guitars and high quality chord construction and musicality. The sort of number that deserves to be taken beyond the dance floor an into a film soundtrack whilst still having bucket loads of funk to move any floor. B2 Takes us back to more usual tech house territory with a trackier moody piece, maintaining the live bass guitar sound in the bottom end. It’s easy to see how Ralf Lawson makes such an impressive life show with music like this. 9. DJ Sense “Hypnotic House Heroes” Casa Del Soul 7/10 www.syntaxrecordings.com The opening track shows how tribal house should be. Smooth, warm congas over funky, driving drums, with hints of timbales and other percussive elements. Spooky, South American flute sounds and tubular bells complete the relentless beat with reversed drum edits to add energy. A2 “Sense Loves Porn Mix” is a little harder and more abrasive but still doesn’t fall into the trap many lesser tribal records fall into by over doing it. Open cymbals lift it up while the female moans take it down. TY Tek’s tackles the remix in his imitable style, long, drawn out drums with lots of little reversed edits and the occasional old school rave sound, flow over the top of earth quaking, explosions of bass a’la “Bomb Scare” from Two Bad Mice favoured of an actual bass line. Lastly, two short tracks of just the chopped vocals and sound effect over a basic loop provide either sampling material or a DJ Tool depending on your preferences. 10. Tom Clark – “In a Trap” Morris Audio 9/10 Heavy-duty, dark, acid house for the ever-growing up generation, this isn’t music for kids, it’ll scare them shitless. Clean bleeps and ticktack top compliment a subby bass line built for sweatboxes with big systems and nothing but a strobe light for company. The vocals: “… in a cage, I wanna break out...” create the kind of edge I only wish more records around could copy. Tenectro House? Perhaps there’s another new sub-genre on the way the people at poker flat and such like are pushing out. Miss out on records like this at your peril!. On the B-side two alternative versions provide more straightforward tracks that are perfectly ok, but really only fillers to the immensely essential main cut. ============================ TECHNO =============================== 1. Lucas Rodenbush aka EBE “Kinetic Progressions EP” Affected www.affectedmusic.co.uk 8/10 Its been a while since we’ve heard from EBE and this release sees him return with aplomb. Opening up “Motivate” is a traditional, Detroit-esque composure comparable with so many early, emotive techno pieces from the early 90’s. Pure analogue emotion and energy. A2 strips back to the drums, machine like and robotic. The masterpiece however is the B1, which once again focuses on the drums in a very detoity manner, but with bundles of energy and multi-layered complex drums sounds. Finally a cut of pure original, minimal electro is offered. The whole package stinks of the early 90’s, normally I look to the future musically, but for some reason I love this EP, there's an underlying funk and feeling that’s extremely difficult to put your finger on but its what drew me to techno in the first place and I’m happy to feel that again. 2. Marco Lenzi – Take it away – Molecular 9/10 This three track EP show Marco moving slightly on from his “looped” style in to more jackin’ twitchin’ techno. Crisp, clean beats and rolling b-line mask edgy percussion with some lovely little edits in the title track, whilst some filtered synths lurk in and around the background of the mix. Its quite housey and funky as fuck. The B1 continues in a similar, jackin, syncopated vein and some really old skool sounding pianos mutate their way up into the mix giving a distinctly housey flavour. Its very heads up and friendly and is sure to please DJs that like to play to girls as well as topless sweaty men, there’s a lovely little breakdown into just the kick and b-line before it all goes off again. B2 shows a more detroity angle, dark haunting synths rise and fall, and the percussion is much more stuttered and the tempo moves into the high 130’s for the first time. This is much more late night compared to the two party flavoured numbers and very well executed - as you’d expect from the molecular man. 3. TDR “Coming down EP” Pias 7/10 Assortments of styles are present on this package. The opening track being an 80’s style four to the flour electro clash song. An excellent arrangement makes this very listen to-able, it’s got all the bleeps and squelches over clean production and proper vocals over the top. A1, the original mix is more break beat orientated but with the same strong 80’s sound and vocals. However some trance sounding chords coming in after a big breakdown and I’m put right off, it’s somewhere between trance, electro pop, broken beat and progressive. Flip it over to “Plique” and a more straightforward club techno track shines through with nice, balanced production, multi-layered drums whilst maintaining a slight whiff of 80 synths in the bottom end. It’s not the most original thing I’ve heard but it does do the job very well with its strong drum arrangement. Its only really the analogue synths that stop this falling into the tech house territory, as the arrangement overall is far more interesting than most techno tracks. 4. Cylob Music Volume 1 Replex records 7/10 www.rephlex.com Four very strange records that I can only attempt to try and categorise as some kind of Japanese electro. The open cut is an eccentric, noodley electronic work out that makes me want to laugh out loud. Unfortunately I’m laughing at it, not with it but at the same time its kind of likable. I have no idea who would actually play stuff like this but good on you if you. There’s a breakdown in the middle that sounds like all the beats are off but it works with the rest of the track. The A2 has some high hats running along without a kick and a similar, wonky synth arrangement but there’s a kind of emotion in it all the deserves respect, for its originality if nothing else. On the flip I can’t work out if the speed has changed, at 45 it sounds too fast and not completely right at 33 either but needless to say its more wonky, eccentric 80’s sounding experiments bought bang up to date. There’s also a Volume 2 with 4 other similar sounding tracks and it’s hard to review that separately along with this cos quite frankly I’m lost for words after the first EP. Apparently this guys being touring with these tracks and has played them all in clubs and you know what? I wish I’d been there just for the fun if it. 5. DJ Lucca “Fast Life EP” Definition 6/10 www.definition-records.de Apparently DJ Lucca is often found opening for Chris Liebing and that comes as no surprise as straight away your hit with loud, rattling beats and bundles of energy. More percussive elements are slowly thrown in as the track rises into some ravey gravy synths. Oh yes this is German all right make no mistake. It’s loud and kicks like an angry horse that hasn’t been fed any sugar cubes for a while. A2 “Moon” starts off promisingly enough, with nice skippy beats and warm analogue bottom end but then the riff from bloody “Big Fun” comes on and its obvious remixer David Squillace has completely run out of any new ideas. Sometimes old tracks get ripped off and it sounds great and really fresh but this is pure shite. Fortunately Leandro Gomez steps up to remix the same track and this is much better, its bouncing but pummelling at the same time and although its really having it the overall sounds of the drums and bottom end is strangely quite soft. Lastly its the original mix of Moon from Lucca and its really funky, having-it club techno. Less pummelling than Gomez’s remix and not a whiff of Inner City anywhere. It’s not the most original track I’ve heard but it’s a good solid party number with tight drums, good production and I’m sure it’ll work a treat. 6. Alexandra Robotnick “The disco-tech of……” Yellow www.yellowproductions.net For those that don’t know Alexander (real name Maurizio Dami) is an Italian electro guru from the 70's/80’s. He’s just started DJing at the age of 56, probably because he couldn’t afford to say no but made a significant contribution to the electronic/new romantic/wave scene in the early 80’s post disco fall out. This compilation album is a collection of tracks, most old and a few new. The first track on the album makes me jump with joy; Tom Tom Club’s “Wordy Rappinghood” I haven’t heard this once since the mid 80’s but I still know how it goes and love every minute of singing along. Next up is Yello’s “I love you” an industrial machine of sounds and samples that have re-appeared many times but is a bit too much and reminds me that today’s “80’s” music is generally a lot better made than the original stuff. Next Charlie’s “Space Woman” is a rather Georgio Moroder sounding piece of space age electro pop. John Fox’s “Underpass” once again demonstrates old music that sounds brand new, especially, if like me you’ve not heard the tune before and so it continues with a few new bits from The Hacker + Miss Kitten and Alexandra himself. The object of the album apparently is to showcase different aged music in a way that is seamless and it defiantly does do that. For me however, the main reason anyone want this album is either to catalogue some unheard 20 year old records that sound up to date but not necessarily that good, or, like me, just to finally have a copy of Tom Tom Club’s Wordy Rappinghood on vinyl for those bar mitzvah, funerals and weddings we might have to play at one day. ==== http://www.djtombaker.com tel + 0044 (0)7970 719444 Mail:- c/o BM 9009, 27 Old Gloucester St, London WC1N 3XX, UK __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover Previous: Petrov, Daniel - " warm art - may 6 - maya amack & trey smith" |