Reviews

Album Review: Sonny Fodera / ‘Moving Forward’ (Cajual)

Matt Oliver 1 Comment

Sonny Fodera - Moving Forward

★★★★☆

The Australian makes club music to buy expensive cocktails to: clean and classy funky house, a fluttery bed of niceness stepping off basslines encouraging a throb from hip-bone to big toe. A builder rather than a definer, Fodera aims at the early part of your social when you’re just getting a feel for where your night’s gonna take you.

A little French filter makes “Turn Down” featuring Gene Farris the one to drain your glass to, and the album’s palm trees are hit by gusts when the clonking basslines of “How Quick,” entailing a great lesson in attitude from Amber Jolene, and “Putting It Down” turn the album with low-end house sureshots that swap that last Cosmopolitan for a slug of something stronger. Your cosy terrace view now doubling as a locked-out sweatbox, the VIP experience becomes a back and forth between the cool (though you may feel pestered by “Caviar Dreams” trying to get to know you) and the steaming.

Fodera’s application of just a little bit of pressure spreads into the sexy pre-Millennium garage-like wind of “Make Me Feel,” and Kim Swift applies dollops of sass on the frosted “You Ain’t For Real.” In effect quite a modestly constructed (or safely functioning) record shaped by in-tune lyricists (never better illustrated than the impudent tribalism of “Mo Fish in da Sea”), Fodera is definitely one for targeting vibes so that the rest shall follow.

File under: DJ Mes, Bru Fave, Oscar G

Album Review: Space Dimension Controller / ‘Welcome to Mikrosector-50’ (R&S)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

Space Dimension Controller Welcome to Mikrosector-50

★★★★☆

As it commandeers your stereo by way of a winking, semi-narrated creation of its own mythology slash travel brochure (the press release is a work of art), Welcome to Mikrosector-50 blinds you with its high Starfleet ranking. Its captain SDC spray-paints the opening scroll of Star Wars, while gorging on Total Recall and Demolition Man given some of the layovers of headset dialogue. However, the assignment settles as a varied, informed selection of electro, house and techno, nullifying the notion of Jack Hamill as just a jester using Saturn’s rings as a hula hoop.

The freaky-deakiness of sleaze-dipped, jumping jack funk nods to a certain pair of highly decorated Pubahs from the Motor City (“Mr. 8040’s Introduction,” the title track), warming up in becoming acquainted with the vessel’s controls, trailing serene stretches of the Milky Way with a bizarrely workable mix of cosmic disco and soft metal (“When Your Love Feels Like It’s Fading”). Fronted by a loverman whose raps, like a medallion swinging Zapp Brannigan, can never be taken seriously, the purring porn wah-wahs of “Quadraskank Interlude” prove that in outer space, no one can hear you knocking boots.

When game-time kicks in, roaming, Italo/Euro edged house, busy joystick-jerking acid (“Rising”), smooth grooving watching the world go by (“The Love Quadrant”) and chugging dub-disco beats, coordinate and validate Hamill’s flair, sense of humor and timing turning oddity into odyssey.

File under: Detroit Grand Pubahs, RL/VL, Jesse Boykins & Melo-X

Album Review: Sasha / ‘Involv3r’ (Ministry of Sound)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

sasha-involv3r

★★★☆☆

Nearly ten years since the first Involver compilation and five since volume two, Sasha’s Balearic teaching is still resonant and relevant. Building, taking his time, showing clubbers where to go and what to do when the sun begins its descent, he of a golden age of superstar DJs works up a deep tech house session with as much relish for loosening up and keeping going.

Effortlessly fluent, personally guiding the sun down himself like an airport marshal, Sasha’s set hums sagely while a wiry girly or candle flickering vocal usually wraps itself around the settings (Ultraísta’s “Smalltalk,” Sasha’s own “Shoot You Down”), while ThermalBear’s “Turn the Tide” plays patron for deep and stylish grooves with ripples of expectancy and vim. Remixing The xx, Benjamin Damage & Doc Daneeka, Ananda Project James Zabiela and more to fit the cause would lead to whispers on the merits of re-tuning all on his terms, were the mix not so accessible in its EDM shushing.

Propped up by a more travel-sized ambient mix, Sasha distils and cleanses the essence of disc one’s contributors. On the surface it just seems to be in thought with itself or has simply lessened the pulse of the source on a two-for-one basis, but is such that the pair become perfect partners as separate entities. Mind soul and body all taken care of, which has always been Sasha’s game.

File under: John Digweed, Nick Warren, Charlie May

Gear Review: Wave Alchemy Electro House Underground

Praxis 1 Comment

Wave Alchemy Electro House Underground

Looking for a little inspiration to get your house tracks up and going? Need a bit of crazy electric sounds to hurry some ideas along? Then look no further than to this fresh new electro house pack from Wave Alchemy.

This heavy-hitting sample pack includes a host of sounds and loops that have been road tested in some of the worlds top superclubs for the past year or so. Filled with hard floor smashing drums, booming basses, uplifting effects, electric hit and synth bits, it will take literally no time to get a top ten track shining with this royalty free pack. With over 1.5gb of sample content including 492 wave samples, 255 house drum loops, 50 filtered percussion loops, 95 bass loops, 92 electro loops, 50 fx samples and 56 patches, this pack is filled to the max with high-quality content.

Available as either a full package or Ableton Live pack, Reason Refill, or Apple Loops, this pack will work flawlessly with any host DAW you may be using. After loading these files onto my machine and filtering through them, I instantly became inspired and started working on a demo track, which ended up becoming something I wanted to spend some more time working on. The loops are inspiring to get an idea flowing, and since all the individual bits are included as well, you can load the sounds into sampler racks and build your own loops as well. Not to many packs offer this amount of killer content, and if you are into getting your house on, then this packed offering is truly a no-brainer!