Reviews

Compilation Review: ‘Ruede Hagelstein – Watergate 13’ (Watergate)

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Ruede Hagelstein - Watergate 13

★★★☆☆

Ruede Hagelstein is a tease, but not in a playful or flirtatious way. When you think you’re being looked after with a mix of calm, considerate deep house, the German weans you off, puts you onto a more pointedly funky strand, then withdraws with inconsiderate timing to what the dancefloor requires. Pulling rugs from under feet when heads are in clouds, it’s a journey not always taking the correct fork in the road.

Starting as a house haven to free the mind before sharp detoxes are lead by Chris Wood & Meat, Hagelstein becomes the DJ booth’s baddie, offering druggy chugs to serviceably dull the session’s expansion. Consulting Amine Edge on letting the funk back in and Marco Resmann as a brain-massaging asset, the prowling pianos of Fischer & Kleber build to a potentially massive moment, expect RH doesn’t follow through with a deservingly detonative drum kick and deadens the impact.

The Salt City Orchestra mix of Marshall Jefferson’s “Mushrooms” is the mix’s centerpiece, a monologue that remains enterprising and weirdly endearing. Perfectly suited for the set’s sensory freedom, it re-builds momentum by itself. Mike Dunn and Losoul again restore funk flavor, the latter with a devilish swing, but the segues continue to lack a natural reasoning and shared degrees of smoothness, and the balance never feels absolutely settled. Plenty of solid individual moments (Shlomi Aber, C2) clamber in and drift off before being awoken by the spinner’s jabbing fingers.

File under: The Cheapers, Tiefschwarz, Henrik Schwarz

Compilation Review: ’20 Jahre Kompakt, Kollektion 1′ (Kompakt)

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20 Jahre Kompakt, Kollektion 1

★★★★☆

Well done to those charged with whittling down the electronic titan’s platinum anniversary down to just two discs — let’s also hope part 1 actually means there will be a part 2. Should your opinion of German labels be a stale cliché — maybe it’s those hard Ks in the name lending themselves to straight-talking effectiveness/ruthlessness — you’ll be thrilled by the automation of Justus Köhncke, Leandro Fresco and Dettinger, though perhaps less enamoured with little flits of the flatter that include Matias Aguayo’s “Walter Neff” not seeming to fit in anywhere.

Those knowing Kompakt’s creativity are offered the sumptuously funky (Aguayo via DJ Koze) as a smooth veil to the mechanised edges and components, found in the everlasting chugs of Voigt & Voigt’s disco-techno “Vision 03” and The Field’s “Over the Ice”. Minimalist techno tradition is held close, done as an all-for-one, inclusive against narrow-minded span. Out of Michael Mayer’s good n itchy deep houser “Lovefood,” comes the crossover-ready “Transient” by Pluxus and its snooping Ford tie-in, and Heiko Voss hankering for a hammock gives the collection quite a head-in-the-clouds headstart.

The excellent disc two gets down to business with techno for the head while leaving your heart heaving. It becomes a battle and balance between light and heavy (of which John Tejada is the most brutal), organic and automated (Rex the Dog getting synths to squirt and stun), and the freedom and focus of The Rice Twins, Jonas Bering, Kaito, Lawrence, GusGus and Gui Boratto.

File under: Jurgen Paape, Superpitcher, Terranova

Compilation Review: Matthew Herbert / ‘Herbert Complete’ (Accidental)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

matthew herbert complete

★★★★☆

Herbert Complete is just Herbert — not Matthew Herbert (well, it is…you’ll see), not Wishmountain or Radio Boy or Doctor Rockit, or his Big Band, or any other business card he can pull out with his name asterisked or in small print. It’s just the Englishman, long regarded as a resourceful/stabiliser of the impractical, subversive, electronic eccentric, displaying his dancefloor chops on this mammoth anthology of reissues, remixes, B-sides, extra extras and stories to tell.

1996’s 100lbs is US-crossing deep house where a slender chic is jockeyed by boxy beats that help develop a harder head for fixed focus techno (the title track, “Take Me Back”). Two years later, Around the House finds deeper understanding of the supine position, engaging in long underwater withdrawals occasionally resting on the nearest rockery, and having Dani Siciliano boost the album’s breathing apparatus with svelte input. Despite the emergence of Herbert’s self-imposed restrictions as to recording methods, its flowing looseness makes a mockery of its grab-bag outlook, mirrored by the more open cause of headphone-cradling, jazz-speckled composure Bodily Functions.

Which in turn, keeps on ironing out the kinks of the clipped, clanky house, garage and techno, here placed in the folders of rare and unreleased club miscellany marked Early Herbert. Nuts and bolts protrude, but are bang into the groove, willing to go for the jugular, and a far cry from the pop opulence (with leftfield studies by ever screwier means) of the Abbey Road-recorded Scale. Class tells throughout, and worth educating yourself with if you wanna become a Herbert hermit.

File under: Matmos, Moloko, DJ Koze

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

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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