Compilation Review: Tosca / ‘Tlapa – The Odeon Remixes’ (!K7)

Tlapa - The Odeon Remixes

★★★☆☆

When the original has been described as a work that puts its progenitors “in the maverick category,” upon being called up for the remix package, do you go like for like and play the rebels at their own game, try and straighten out the eccentricities to get them on your team, or just go about your own business to let them know who this project is really about?

Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber are now seated for deep house and cosmic disco (“Meixner” again taking to the highway), measuring gilt-edged lushness and a look-ahead tightening of dancing shoes, all with a little loftiness carried over by an international cast. Dorfmeister’s own head to head with Madrid de Los Austrias means jazzy stepping out of bed comes with a little less stubble, taking a shine to a drifter donning top hat and tails, and there are even footnotes made within new supplements as Brendon Moeller betters himself as Beat Pharmacy to claim extra credit for “Bonjour,” with a dance floor study approaching odyssey status.

Whereas sombreness seemed to intrude on the source, there’s larger uplift second time around, without it being a facelift finishing in a manic grin. Though the AGF reformation of “Cavallo” displays a impatience that breaks up the original, “JayJay” in particular sounds more wide awake when taken care of first by Stefane Lefrancois, then with Makossa and Megablast rechanneling its pseudo-goth energy. In conclusion, all of the above.

File under: Rodney Hunter, Rainer Truby, Joyce Muniz

Album Review: Shigeto / ‘No Better Time Than Now’ (Ghostly International)

Shigeto No Better Time Than Now

★★★★☆

The souring of buttery instrumentals by Zach Saginaw crafts a trickle-down effect of warm beats hitting jagged rocks. Like settling down at the end of the day in an uncomfortable chair sent by the LA beat scene, Shigeto is just above melancholic but is never far away from disaffected, creating silver linings — just like the eponymous track 11 — with fractures in them.

The mixing of analogue plug-ins with methods using digital chopsticks, hardens adolescent innocence to cold facts. “Olivia” gets heads nodding while administering paper cuts to ears, and hip-hop burbles chunter under their breath (“Detroit Part 1”). Any positivity is always consumed mildly, a habitual sweetness in the air (“Ritual Howl”) handled with concern. Where one or two beats refuse to let on, sometimes you wish Shigeto would come out and be less emotionally indistinct. “Perfect Crime” noodles and fidgets away, teasing with hopeful segments that are quickly done for.

Saginaw sifting through several processes at once is why his mood never appears as cut and dried as merely lonely or savouring isolation. With there being no barren spells of emptiness, flickers, squirms and tics in a smothered surround sound create a low-rent richness you feel you can lean on. Conversely, when fighting for sleep as temperature takes over, the lava lamp alongside starting to churn fiery colours, this is just the instrumentalism to go with it.

File under: Teebs, Sweatson Klank, Frank Omura

Album Review: The Green Man / ‘Sound Power’ (Basswerk)

The Green Man Sound Power

★★★★☆

Two discs of jump-up jungle where the jump-up comes from bullets brushing against your bootlaces. The Green Man is no enigma in darkness, yet there’s no denying his relish of the distance he keeps between himself and his audience.

As Heiner Kruse speeds out the driveway, spurred on by basslines ranging from widescreen coasting (the pulsating “Electronic Supersymphonic”), to full-on ding-dong (“Chainsmoker”), the lead becomes like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino; he tries to keep himself to himself, but if looks could kill as on “Stay True”, TGM would probably be classed as a homicidal maniac (a handful of tech snarls reveal when things do unravel). Off the gas and into thinking mode, the pallor of some of the German pioneer’s 90s-bred intelligentsia and well-orchestrated alone time is TGM becoming even more tight lipped.

Ambience still showing frown lines, as if lounging on a bed of nails, the break of flow and the shrug of a five o’clock shadow can leave you feeling as empty as some of the producer’s sound beds that put genuine open space ahead of simple minimalism. His uplifting moments force a weak smile, with the closing two tracks going virtually head over heels.

While 30 tracks are a lot to take on board, it’s hard not to root for straight-talking ‘n’ bass with scores to settle and grudge matches to contest.

File under: Kahluha Funk, Ill.Skillz, DJ Die

Album Review: Paul Anthony / ‘Black Out’ (Dirty Fabric)

Paul Anthony Black Out

★★★☆☆

Sophistication, grace, mercy, complexity…Paul Anthony doesn’t care for such things on this release of nearly two hours of hot and bothered, riff-a-rific tech-house. From back to front it’s an incessant stamp of infuriating blips and squeaks pushing trebles over the edge, and basslined pumps revved into action by starter pulley.

Wrenched acid, bro-step/breaks loans and a hyped up pair of barbershop clippers assist in Anthony’s headbangers’ ball blazing something filthy. Not outwardly X-rated (okay, there is “Kangaroo Butt Sex,” but that’s just nonsense packed off with pogo sticks), but a wire wool scrub down becomes essential when done with Anthony’s can’t stop-won’t stop blitz (“Shake Dat Ass” convulsing to the brink) from Dutch house running into Chicago’s ghetto gutters on a rockstar whim. “Cream Pie” with its digi-sax/”Destination Calabria” lick, opens more available doors on a record where the underlying ethos is defiantly if you can’t beat us, join us, the likes of the toothy “Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew” too infectiously gnarled not to get down to.

Suffice to say variation is minor, carnage rolling out of soaring/preset builds and breakdowns, though using the time-honored “in the beginning there was Jack” vocal gives “Drums of Life” a different outlook, watching booty bass belly dancer “Do the Dance” rides the grating/contagious divide. Knuckle-headed in parts, but it makes no apologies for making the club feel the back of its hand.

File under: Nick Thayer, Bass Kleph, Bassnectar