Iron Curtis' debut for the Retreat imprint overseen by Yanneck Salvo aka Quarion and Session Victim's Hauke Freer certainly doesn't disappoint, delivering a resolutely fine deep house moment across the A Side in "Cover Me". Swathes of Chicago loving pads punctuate the first half of a track driven by liquid drips of bass and hi-hats pimped with crispness. It's the glorious drop into silence that prefaces the arrival of highly pitched vocal, thumping 808 kicks and crazed key stabs that act as the most pleasant slap in the face you'll receive in 2010. Straying far from the deep house template, the title track "Stumbled Across" is delightfully schizophrenic attempt at beatdown, driven by a deliberately off key array of snares, hi-hats and claps. An equally stuttering approach to laying down synths and keys has a dizzyingly brilliant effect. Flipping the script further, the all too brief "Creeps" displays a talent for head nodding MPC choppage to a backdrop of ethereal chord patterns.

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