Author: Matt Oliver

Compilation Review: ‘Soma Compilation 21 Mixed by Gary Beck’ (Soma)

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Soma Compilation 21 mixed by Gary Beck

★★★★☆

Sixty minutes to get down and boogie, tell others to get out the way, and to hold your head up high and see the light. Gary Beck on his debut mix mans the Soma express, heading into the next double decade with a recap of some of the Glasgow’s label’s ripest.

Easing into the mix with DeepChord’s dub-boiled bubbling, the tide begins to turn when Heiko Laux and Steve Rachmad’s “The Viking” tells you to snap out of whatever dancefloor daydream has come over you. With no time to waste, Beck always giving the turntables a firm push without being overzealous, a Claude Von Stroke mix of Scott Grooves’ “Mothership Connection” applies some staunch tech-house funkiness. Mark Henning gets greater groove going on immediately after, in time for the mix beginning a quick planetary orbit.

Pig&Dan and Mark Reeve restore a supply of techno that goes down a dark alley to fight its own fight. Having hardened the dancefloor and with tribal conditioning still to be inserted, Beck takes it upon himself to open the arena’s roof so radiance comes pouring in with “Algoreal,” without giving up on the stomp he’s paved, furthered by Funk D’void’s “Diabla” flourishing under the tutelage of Christian Smith and Wehbba, and taken to a serene conclusion by Ricardo Villalobos remixing Envoy. A sweepingly concise 21 gun Soma salute.

File under: Alex Under, Matthias Tanzmann, Oliver Deutschmann

Album Review: Mathew Jonson / ‘Her Blurry Pictures’ (Crosstown Rebels)

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Mathew Jonson Her Blurry Pictures

★★★★☆

Mathew Jonson is in deep thought. Sinewy house and electro strands weaved with quick fingers like a hacker running rampant on a computer keyboard, his high zoom digital lens progresses into the languid deep, catching itself on its way to slumber while something inside fidgets all night long. The Canadian spins relatively close to his chest as a real advocate of letting the music do all the talking. His sentinel stance slickly makes sounds tick over and applies pressure with seemingly little exertion, next to no friction but plenty of lubrication; the funky efficiency of “Touch the Sky” champions how to avoid overextension but still carrying forward the stamina of a marathon runner. Very Crosstown Rebels, in fact.

Then, mixing trance chords and blunt breakbeats on “Lightweight Champion” makes a logical step when it should be incompatible; Jonson recalibrates the timekeeper persona of precision dynamics and starts swiping like a grizzly trying to claw at a bug. On the other hand, the excellent techno-acid spasm “Body in Motion” is the trigger to becoming the aggressor — still wiry, but now revving its feet back like a bull — and will please those hoping he’d hop out from the DJ booth and get amongst the throng below. Closing with the title track’s ambient swirl makes an even less seamless path from A to B as Jonson quietly evolves within the space of just eight tracks.

File under: Cobblestone Jazz, Modern Deep Left Quartet, Midnight Operator

Album Review: Q’Hey / ‘Core’ (Torque)

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q'hey 'core

★★★☆☆

The one-track mind of Masaya Kyuhei breaks the latch on his fleet of kickdrum beasts that have been made to pump iron in the name of dancefloor bloodsport. The clues in the title and the label represent pure Japanese techno machinery bolting from a cage the size of an aircraft hangar, and while reasonably and expectedly dark, it gleams under a full moon with all of its platinum pistons buffed and ready to grab scruffs of necks.

The minimalism (read, nothing much gets a look-in once the drums are set) has you jump up to the flying of sparks and echo calculating its way across blacked-out space; about as much adornment comes on “Buddyroid,” a deafening 18-wheeler with a claxon intermittently going off to declare core meltdown is on its way and a building synth spray providing a strong and seldom uplifting afterglow. Interrupted by the pit stops of “Signal” and “Montreux” telling the accelerator to take five before making a swooping surround sound re-entry, Q’Hey’s cracking of the whip lands down the middle of an argument between straight to the point techno or a relentless clunk in need of variation.

“Cut the Crap” ironically uses the album’s central, uncompromising bounce like its slam dunking medicine balls to cajole a wee bit of funkiness out of the procession, and “Enter”‘s ear-ringing riff bearing down like atomic raindrops shows slight modifications to the management of mind and muscle. Wanna stomp? Q’Hey has the answers.

File under: Hideo Kobayashi, Spektre, Markus Suckut

Album Review: Siriusmo / ‘Enthusiast’ (Monkeytown)

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Siriusmo Enthusiast

★★★☆☆

In granting electronica carte blanche and giving freedom to a techno essence, Siriusmo’s avoidance of the abstract stays up for pushing the boundaries as well as his luck. Thirteen tracks aren’t joined at the hip — some are several cousins removed — but work as a loosely-bound team. The German’s maverick make-up balks at becoming a mad professor — though perfectionist and tinkerer are both applicable after the follow-up to Mosaik underwent numerous modifications – in exchange for changing lanes from the slow hard shoulder to the autobahn’s fastest route.

It’s party-hardy, emphasised by a Q-Tip soundalike anchoring “Plastic Hips” and “Congratulator” starring as the kind of disco dazzle you wish Daft Punk had recently committed more to, showing that the album’s title wasn’t happened upon by chance. “Rantanplant” is like grainy vaudeville techno, between cheeky and giving you the evil eye as it loosens a few screws, with “Leftovers” equally as capricious but with a sense of pride about it.

“Tränen Aus Bier”, on some slumped, Dilla-esque head-dunking, is one wrench to the left Moritz Friedrich is comfortable committing to as a total odd-jobs man. He proceeds to go after more sterile electro pop-ups on “Itchy” and jazzy floor show solos that turn the spotlight on “Liu.” Reputation escalating as one-man band, clarity is still needed as to whether he’s a versatile music lover or running Enthusiast up the flagpole.

File under: Modeselektor, Boys Noize, Michael Fakesch