Author: Matt Oliver

Album Review: Paul Mac / ‘Hotel Insomnia’ (EPM)

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★★★☆☆

In no mood to start spinning lullabies to the sleep-deprived but an indicator of the check-in/check-out routine of the global spinner, UK veteran Paul Souter aims to peel off motel wallpaper with a fifth album of techno and tech-house damage. Using the hotel room as studio sounding board, Hotel Insomnia dives headfirst into everything; not going as far as backing a back-to-basics approach, but with a certain “Strings of Life” zing to “Old,” Mac is under the tuition that if there’s a beat to get into and a floor to wipe opposition with, get on with it and stop waiting for things to happen. “Driven Points” is a great example, urged on by wicked bassline propulsion, while a mirror image philosophy goes for the somewhat abrupt exits some tracks make.

Occasionally meandering into the fruitless, the semi-scientific “Disc Electronique” is sparklingly spacious or spotlessly empty, and “Kinda Dubby” is bit too straight-up-and-down. Regardless, Mac is always busy, overlapping with layers mouse-clicked through a techno revolving door, always in control, and despite being an aggressor of significant might, always hard but fair. “More Disco” and tumble-dryer/punisher “Sketched Up” love dark alleys and bumping into people therein, and “Never Ending” rides the night train to delight all midnight metro commuters as it shakes and shanks from side to side; all proof of the album’s grit and graft.

File under: Ben Sims, Mark Broom, Sou Tai

Album Review: Smoove / ‘First Class’ (Jalapeno)

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★★★★☆

Here’s how UK funksmith and soul governor Jonathan Watson breaks down the remix: Traditional values are king, but applying new shine is great when you’ve got the knowhow. High fun content should be involved (Third Degree’s cover of Kylie’s biggest brain-bug is a great icebreaker), and heart and soul should be everpresent. Funk and hip-hop with a pinch of Latin will rebound off one another, and though there is a respect for the refined, make for way phat drums: no kicks or snares on diets please, so says “Boogaloo Stomp.” Knowing his way around body contours, from B-boy biomechanics to female anatomies, plumpness of basslines, soul of vocal and the ‘liveness’ of performance has jams like the densely layered “Witness” sounding like Smoove has gotten a whole posse involved to re-shape the raw ingredients – and as per “Message from the King,” these ingredients are r-a-w.

While 15 exclusives and vinyl only-cuts narrow the line between having range and having a different remix for everyone, Smoove is never caught sneaking away from the party early. “King of Latin Rhythm” sounds like it could go on all night long, and anything involving Afrika Bambaataa is gonna be the first to arrive and last to leave. “It’s My Funk,” a highly fly disco-house group hug, also shows call and response will never go out of style. Your New Year’s Eve soundtrack is now taken care of.

File under: The New Mastersounds, John Turrell, Boca45

Compilation Review: ‘Berghain 06 – Norman Nodge’ (Ostgut Ton)

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★★★★☆

Just from the titles, this is techno on a guided tour through a weapons catalog and stockroom of spare parts for when your inner hard drive fails you. The mythical Berghain aura, given an almost fantastical scope by Norman Nodge, foretells a back entrance through vaporous winds and storage of broken hopes. This is before the dance floor arrives at your feet, 4/4s nearing until they scythe through an impressively processed atmosphere, the beast awoken when Patrick Gräser’s ‘From Foreign Territories’ locks on with radar-circling beats.

The mystical entrance disappearing into a mirage, Nodge resets, pursues murk and pinballs beats from Staffan Linzatti, before Silent Servant hits the accelerator and fully clears the fog so you can now see the attacker rampaging towards you. Then embarking on a long stretch that grinds away with grim procedure, ribs are jabbed until your heart pulls the emergency exit lever on your chest. As the mix races down one single corridor, dodging nuclear fallout as it goes, Mark Broom tampering with the combination to “Vault 5” diverts attention with tingles to the backbone, a longed-for shade of depth looking down at the void with a slightly different focus. Chancellor recommences the pummelling that won’t have its head turned, but some concluding divergence involving Tim Taylor & DJ Slip, Radioactive Man and Legowelt suddenly turns the mix into the model three-headed monster of start-middle-end.

File under: Prosumer, Marcel Fengler, Mike Denhert

Album Review: Falko Brocksieper / ‘Shortcake Strategy’ (Treibstoff)

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★★★★☆

A German tech-house visionary with a knowledge of history (see electro extension “Avoid”), Falko Brocksieper’s mood ripples from grumpy to proper, it’s-all-your-fault irritable, like he’s flipping from A side to B and back over and over, still deciding as to what his favourite chip settings are like a PMSing robot. Even at his most emotion-bearing, FB stays pixellated and AI-centric — “LMFM” is the classic man-fembot love story — yet the mechanics are always fluent and flexible, the synthetics not party to a series of soulless droids.

However sullen, you’ll move to the grimaces of the bass-lead “Outride a Crisis” that can still give everyone a Balearic smile, followed by “Punta Ayampe” specifically going for an Ibizan climax. Acid heir “Hoboken” still somehow has the step and bounce of The Goodmen when it’s quite clear this is no carnival, making you sense each dance floor chug is on a mission to understand more about the human condition. “Reverse Engineering” is a one-track mind seizing control, as with all good techno, with loops to hijack your subliminal, and the ambience of “Become” infiltrates as if it’s a preset function Brocksieper can activate when he overheats. An excellent, compact exhibition of dance floor engineering, and suffice to say it has one of the year’s greatest titles in all the land as well.

File under: The Result, Barker & Baumecker, Dan Curtin