ANTRAUM Vinyl & CDs

Review: This release by two talented French producers delivers a refined blend of deep and soulful house music with two different versions to chose from. 'Ju' on Side-1 is a deep, groove-heavy cut, layering soulful chords with a rolling bassline and a sensual vocal touch. The jazzy inflections and swanky lounge vibe exude sophistication, making it a late-night essential. On Side-2, the Traumer's Sunset version injects more energy into the original, pushing it toward a melodic, instrumental-driven burner. It retains the deep essence but lifts it with fluid rhythms and hypnotic layers. Elegant yet club-ready, both versions show a sleek, polished minimalism rooted in groove.

Review: Antraum's latest record is an exemplary case of whispery vocal fry working hand-in-hand with autotune: 'Fukai' serves fullerine-sharp, atomic sheets of vocal sound, set against harder beats, reducing our eardrums to the consistency of butter. It's no wonder that each and every release so far on the self-run outfit Omakase is so raw, so slicing, so cutting. The label is named after a Japanese culinary expression of indifference, "i'll leave it up to you", which, in the context of sushi dining, refers to chefs selecting and preparing dishes for patrons for them, rather than letting them choose. We're sure Claude Levi-Strauss, author of "The Raw & The Cooked", would've had something to say about this release. Because 'Yume' and 'Kemono' are also served as two further itamae's specials, assimilating ideas of music production and food preparation: beats, stabs and vocals are sliced, diced, sampled, mixed, filleted, and rolled into shiso-leaved bites.

Review: Minimal production duo Antraum are back with 'Omakase 004', their latest for the eponymous label. Through chirpy voxxes, street-slicking beats and furtive steps-down-into-the-exclusive-club, we'd've half expected this EP to have wafted up from a manhole cover in the dead of New York. Yes, this one seems to portray a world in which tech house, not modal jazz, is the sound and site of rule-flouting lasciviousness. 'Mata' fidgets away into an intuitive kind sophisti-trance, calling elegant trinkets and bespoke retro internal designs to mind. 'Dojo', meanwhile, moves ever so slightly martial-artistic, its various vocal chops and beeps resembling the various instructions and entreatments uttered by the tech house sensei.

Review: Omakase, which is the name of a style of Japanese dining that means literally 'I leave it up to you' and gives full control of a meal to the chef in question, is also now an ever more vital minimal label. This is its third outing and one with Antraum at the helm. It kick off with 'Hyaku' with its bluesy vocal samples and lazy, infectious drum loops, then has 'Shichi' has more silky and spaced out pads and smooth grooves. 'Rei' is a dreamy one with balmy chords making for a trippy late night day dream and is the sort of track that will zoned out dance floors at 5 am. A tasteful EP for sure.