Subb An

Review: With such a heavyweight trio of tech-house talents involved, you'd expect this surprise studio hook-up between Enzo Siragusa, Archie Hamilton and Subb-An to be rather good. Predictably, both tracks hit the spot. A-side "Playdem" hits all the right notes, with the experienced threesome wrapping creepy chords, jaunty piano motifs and carefully chosen spoken word snippets around a fireside-warm bassline and snappy, handclap-heavy machine drums. The fun continues on flipside "Shimmering", a ludicrously loose and bass-heavy roller blessed with deep and trippy electronics and just the right of late night funk. Really, though, it's the weightiness of the sub-bass that hits home hardest.

Review: Making a surprising addition to German minimal imprint Pleasure Zone is Midlands tech house hero Subb-An. To be fair, this isn't the first time that the now Berlin based producer has flirted with the underground, having released on labels like Cabinet, Fuse London and Blind Box Series in recent years - after having made his name on top imprints like Crosstown Rebels and Visionquest. The Another Time EP sees him deliver some reduced and dubbed-out shenanigans for the afterhours: from the minimal boompty business of the title track on the A side, while on the flip "Overdrive" hears him pump it harder in hypnotic fashion and the dub version which injects it with more dancefloor dynamics.

Review: Berlin's Beste Modus is run by local stalwarts Cinthie, Diego Krause, Ed Herbst, stevn.aint.leavn & Albert Vogt. For the third edition of Beste Freunde, they have onboard some of the biggest names in tech house at present and they're all throwing down some wicked grooves. On the A side Birmingham's Subb-An gives us the raw, stripped and jacking "Feel For You" which beats that 808 good and hard with some familiar samples over the top. Next, the stripped dub techno of Walker's "Confessions" lends some variety to the release; fans of the Fachwerk sound will dig this one. On the flip, London's The Willers Brother gives us the rolling and minimal deep house of "Can You Get Up?" which is perfect for afterhours hypnotism and finally back into the jackin' house side of things courtesy of Frenchman Julien Sandre with tough yet sexy groove of "Ordinary Madness"