Reviews

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

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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)

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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)

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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

Album Review: Vector Lovers / ‘iPhonica’ (Soma)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

VECTOR LOVERS - IPHONICA

★★★☆☆

Composed entirely on an iPhone, Vector Lovers’ Martin Wheeler announces that the end of the world is nigh, someone should’ve thought of the idea sooner, or this is music’s creative platform from now on.

The distinction between mobile production unit and fully equipped studio is unnoticeable, to the point where cynics might question whether a phone alone was involved. And in the event of being completely familiar with the Nanostudio app used, others will find it limited and predictable (okay, it’s a long shot, but in this world of keeping ahead of technology, it at least readies a messageboard debate.)

The result is tingly electronic downtime keeping one wary eye open (“Vigil” shows the synthetic world a human spirit), dubtronica watching clouds pass — certainly conjuring images of VL being in his own world when producing from airport lobby or hotel room — and hard-boiled tech constructions (“Replicator”) on a gentle sensory wavelength. Wheeler imparts a revisited irony early on with “Warm Laundrette” – using the most upfront equipment to recreate a 1982 electro-synth profile – to raise the album from its slight, prolonged one dimensionality.

When the world’s massage parlours all become automated, this’ll probably be its soundtrack. It certainly disposes the idea of personal stereo hiss being heard from the back of the bus or train given its full bodied riches, but it’s the concept and blurb that wins out over the music.

File under: DFRNT, Lee J Malcolm, Badly Born Droid