Compilation Review: ‘Mighty Mouse – Disco Circus Volume 4’ (Bears Eats Fish)

Disco Circus Volume 4

★★★★☆

Mighty Mouse’s disco ball keeps on spinning, increasingly open to interpretation and moving further from the flares and chest hair dictionary definition. To those saying he’s losing sight of the goal, it’s all about finding likeminded bedfellows that may not be disco by design but grab the space between the lines, opportune reminders of this push and pull revealed by the ilk of Drop Out Orchestra and Baunzz!

Hence why there are bunches of rave pianos stumbling into the wrong room but making new friends, and “Electric Moonshine” going Balearic. There’s electro-pop whose age you can’t tell, punk funk looking at itself in the glitterball’s mirrors, psych-funk throwdowns, acid awakenings, pure house… all chugging away ‘til dawn with enough glitter and gold about them to fit the bill. Egged on by its cosmic cousin (including Lindstrøm’s supreme voyager “I Feel Space”), a dot-joining lovability rubs off so you’re hugging strangers, as sought by the open invitation to informal, unprejudiced partying from either someone’s living room, a convenient patch of land no-one’s using, or a basement full of old or old-sounding vinyl (Barrabas, Prins Thomas remixing Surahn). Meanwhile the purists/snobs might wanna head to Auxiliary Tha Masterfader or Rainer Weichhold to satisfy their terms and classifications.

More about the solace found in the physical auditorium/big top, than the stereotype in platform shoes, it’s an all-in welcome with some disco in it, going the distance while the true colors don’t run.

File under: Horsemeat Disco; Psychemagik; Secretsundaze

Compilation Review: ‘Focus On…Daniel Dexter’ (Poker Flat)

Focus On...Daniel Dexter

★★★★★

The latest leg of Focus On… is sequenced in such a way that once arid, star-lit, deep and consistent grooves are regarded as assured, and at worst as a deep house/techno stereotype, German schemer Dexter riles his portfolio into retaliation. “Night Away” is first to bite back with a grittier riff taking it back to jack yet pushing on, with feisty success seen to by vocal moll Geraldine Roth. With “Murder” its likeminded, raw yet buff accomplice, both hit with an icy bite, yet no amount of drive can hide the fact both are based on the simplest of loop ditties. “Papillion” is more the brains behind the operation, slickly going about its business with an organ bassline chewing a toothpick of cool.

More dusky rhythms are hot for turning on the style. “No House for Old Men” and the saxed-up “Storm” both play an action hero checking its cufflinks aren’t out of place while beats rumble past its ears. So you’re getting a whole lotta class that you can still worked up by and to, thanks to Dexter’s astuteness giving the dancefloor an extra ten percent with perfect drops of the needle. Again it’s not science, but it is textbook, done by putting uncomplicated bends in the straight up and down (even affording a little trance sensibility to “Sirens”), then returning to a more controlled and collected state. One genuine surprise is the concluding remix for Gender Bombs, a post-dubstep/Portishead elegy switching the spotlight that suits Mr. Dexter extremely well.

File under: Burns, DJ Q, Nahn Solo

Compilation Review: ‘Rita Maia presents Sine of the Times’ (Badmood)

Rita Maia presents Sine of the Times

★★★☆☆

Putting on post-dubstep with two-step observance, Rita Maia’s sine language is all about the breathy that puts its back into it, and the heaviest of fine mists and light drizzle darting down until skin is soaked. While the umbrella is up, the watery effect flows through My Panda Shall Fly’s garage/techno tightening together “Kandy”. A simple case of bass collation and correlation, picked by a Portuguese spinner extending a choice radio show by casting a worldwide eye over mature low frequencies.

A tribal intervention apiece from Bongos Ikwue remixed by Simbad and BD1982’s “The Wave Chamber” opens up the premise, coloring the wispy grays and off-whites with rangy maximalist synths without straying from the dignified. An eleventh hour riposte has the all-out rave outburst of NKC’s “Fading Floor” wilding out when slipping into a pair of white gloves, and the lethal sniping of Visionist sounds killer, unfortunately not giving itself time to really impose itself. Otherwise the compilation sticks to standards in being toughly elegant and smoothing out the knife edge it balances upon (VVV’s “Lost and Found”). Nothing especially jumps out and declares revolution, maybe because of its all-in-together overview (which itself shows a bass as universal language motif), but it’s an assured and concise collection holding the line, and everything you could ask for when it comes to coverage of bass forms for all weathers.

File under: Badmood Collective, LV, Diskotopia

Album Review: Oliver Deutschmann / ‘Out of the Dark’ (vidab)

oliver deutschmann out of the dark

★★★☆☆

Out of darkness… the even darker, a light that wants to return back from whence it came and illuminations loath to escape their blackened source. A glow created by Berliner Oliver Deutschmann rewiring the dimmer switch, makes you buy into a synthetic reality stretching across a full techno scale. Light-headed starting points, likening transport to music technology (“Junglo” sleekly riding the rail), are a prelude to your massaged temples being subject to vice-like repetitive stress, making you think twice about reaching for the embrace it can offer.

From taking some me-time to Deutschmann clinically going at you with whip in hand, “Siem Reap 2013” hovering with a force that comes from cycling over and over, the mind control manages a dividing area giving you the best of both ambience and aggravation. In a conflict of what to side with (“Sadness Descends”), the terra firma Deutschmann traverses either stimulates safeness from harm or isolation prompting anxiety attacks. As quick to make you feel comfortable, wanted and part of his plans as he is to take away the inclusion and become distant and single-minded, usually done within an easy shift in weight on the drums, it remains pretty direct despite leaving room for reflection and analysis. And in the way rim shots and percussion are structured and Joey Beltram is bowed down to on “New World Order,” an identifiable old school aesthetic re-coordinates dark and light from back when.

File under: Gowentgone, Ed Davenport, Tomas Svensson