The best new singles this week

Our writers recommend their faves from the week’s singles postbag

SINGLE OF THE WEEK

Talking Drums – Slow Motion (Talking Drums)

The enigmatic Talking Drums crew are back with their latest misadventures in cosmic rhythm, serving three suitably rambunctious tracks on the inappropriately titled ‘Slow Motion’ EP. To say the team (or indeed, individual) behind the Talking Drums moniker are (or possibly is) prone to secrecy is something of an understatement. All that can be said with any degree of certainty is that the music presented under the banner is routinely excellent – with each release effortlessly gliding between the outer realms of deviant disco, Balearic bliss, and global-facing cosmic disobedience.

The word is that they’re a Manchester-based act, which – apart from narrowing down identifying those responsible for the fine music to a cool half a million – goes some way to explaining the intrinsic dancefloor-primed spirit of the grooves they purvey. Even the location can’t be certified, however, and a cursory glance of the Talking Drums website offers little in the way of clues, merely teasing that their “way wonky and oozing grooves” are proudly composed for “the fringe class.”

As the name suggests, then, the drums really are charged with doing the talking, and what a vivid story they tell. Having launched back in 2018, the latest EP marks the fifth release from the TD camp, and, as expected, it’s a rare treat for lovers of esoteric backroom heat. The title track explodes over piercing proto-house drums, as sleek arpeggiated bass drives space-age synth leads, kitsch vocals and atmospheric sweeps combine for a sensuous Italo-tinged workout. Adding lashings of funk-soul fun to the sonic cauldron, the glorious slap-bass wonder of ‘Speaking With My Drums’ is an unabated party-starter.

The rasping vocals of the verse make way for a rousing chorus, in between starry passages of boogie synth bursts, searing electric guitar solos, and vivacious percussive fills. Dispensing with the bulk of the vocals in favour of delay-strewn psychedelia, the (almost) instrumental ‘Dubbing With My Drums’ is quite possibly even better, as the spaced-out sonics provide just a little more room into which saucer-eyed dancers can lose themselves.

PC

Drone – Polar Opposite (Sector 7 Sounds)

Don’t let the name fool you – Finn Donohue’s music is far from static. Since 2015 he’s been rolling out grime and dubstep beats with flair and precision. It was with the Sapphire EP for Boofy’s Sector 7 Sounds label in 2018 that he hit a purple patch which is still going strong, notching up drops on V.I.V.E.K’s System label including the mind-bending ‘Amphibious’, taking the kind of sideways slant on dubstep needed to keep it fresh and engaging after so long since the scene’s breakthrough years.

Moodiness has prevailed throughout Donohue’s work to date. His last link up with Hyroglifics on System was ice-cold in its demeanour, but by way of contrast there’s a forthright fierceness to ‘Malevolent’ which shakes the Drone sound out of its sullen stupour. The bass reaches well up into the mids and grinds hard, albeit never into the excessive realms of face-melt. At all times Donohue handles the intensity, creating a monster without trashing the atmosphere.

‘Kaleidoscope’ offers a more melodic offering which again sits apart from the minimal approach often associated with Drone, using a pan flute synth lead to shape out a meditative stepper. It’s solid, albeit a little more MOR than the most thrilling work Donohue has done in the past. ‘Polar Opposite’ soon redresses the balance with a sharp and deadly offering which plays to his strengths. The detail is in the drum sequencing, snapped tight to the grid with an electro-like roll which screams 808. In the context of 140 it sounds utterly effective, shot through with light brushstrokes of bass as necessary, and not a drop more.

The EP rounds out on ‘No Future’ which again provides a melodic foil to the heavyweight gear, but compared to ‘Kaleidoscope’ there’s a more memorable slant to the B2 cut, mainly thanks to the wobbly, reverse-voiced lead. It’s a succinct jam, as they all are, but it says exactly what it needs to in the space it has.
OW

Belia Winnewisser – Mother Earth Took Poison In Her Soil (Die Orakel)

Never before have we heard breakbeats quite so broken. This week of all weeks, we were keen to learn Zurich-based producer Belia Winnewisser is one such master breaks-chopper. Were we to consult her dojo, we’d almost certainly pass the test for black-belt block chopping slayage, and fast. 

Following up her debut album ‘Radikale Akzeptanz’, she here debuts a surprise EP for Frankfurt’s Die Orakel, ‘Mother Earth Took Poison In Her Soil’. Channeling a garish, bio-renaissance EP cover aesthetic, and smashing it against a palette of searing, seething breakbeats, this EP is the equivalent of a drained Matthew Barney-esque epic. The self-titled opener doesn’t ease into breaks, but rather tantalizes them; it’s less of an all-out rager and more of a world-building curio, working in ponderous synth plucks with buzzy, farty basslines.

Two interludes bookend the next three tracks, working in crazed biotech sound design with hazardous bloops and bleeps – or are they the same thing? It’s as if Winnewisser is posing a question about virtual fantasies and the real world: are they reconcilable? Are breakbeats toxic? Are they environmental contaminants? Do breaks corrupt?

Breaks certainly are powerful sounds, and as they say, absolute breaks corrupt absolutely. ‘Dancing Patterns’ is by far this EP’s standout and most toxic track, being just the right exercise in said brand of maximalist breaks-absolutism. Seguing out of of the former track’s organic bloops come a series of hyperpopped kicks and cute whoops, backed up by heartbrokenly emotive strings. ‘Haze’, meanwhile, is the steppers’ choice, emerging out of a bass-whoompy intro and leaning into a not-quite-percussive arpeggiative build. 

Closer ‘Unattainable Promises’ is by far the breaksy favourite. With its title seeming to nod to the impossible sonic possibilities allowed by audio tech like timestretching and repitching, the track seems to warp breaks around breaks around breaks, challenging the more recent breakwork of Lee Gamble, Overmono or Kessler in recent years. Layers beget more layers, with higher-pitched breaks curled around core breaks in the low end. It’s like a broken fractal, like hands emergent from fingers. A hyperpoppy, unkillable hydra of an EP.

JIJ

East Coast Love Affair ‘Chicago’ (Athens Of The North)

You have to be a brave soul indeed to attempt to cover an artist as masterful as Roy Ayers. Only the most inspired of interpretations are likely to bring anything novel to music created with as much virtuosity and feeling as that of the jazz-funk genius. With that in mind, East Coast Love Affair’s stunning rendition of Ayers’ 1983 track ‘Chicago’ is nothing short of triumphant: expertly encapsulating the soul of the original while re-framing it as an authentic tribute to the throbbing acid house sound forged in the windy city. Euan Fryer and Nick ‘Linkwood’ Moore are no strangers to carving intriguing covers under the East Coast Love Affair moniker they reserve for Athens Of The North productions.

Having previously offered their take on titles by Eddie Kendricks, Peter Hunningale, and Sky’s The Limit, the self-dubbed “Athens Of The North House Band” never fail to delight with their imaginative interpretations. Released on the ‘Silver Vibrations’ album, the original version of ‘Chicago’ is characterised by its pitch-bent strings, vocal chants, and jazz-rich chord progressions. The ECL version retains the brooding string drones and distinctive vocal, hanging the familiar parts over an infectious bed of undulating acid, crisp machine drums, and energetic percussion. Deep, jazzy, and endowed with enough bite to work the dance floor, it works brilliantly. On the b-side, we find the duo in expressive mood, collaborating with Crystal Winds to conjure a golden Balearic haze on the gorgeously sun-kissed ‘Back on You’.

Here, soul-flecked vocals sweep over summery guitar motifs, morphing drones and evocative horns as rolling congas add a touch of vigour to the timeless groove. Each immaculately crafted track presented on the EP stands up wonderfully well, and, when viewed as a whole, the music exemplifies the near-boundless scope of this hyper-talented production outfit.

PC

 Mark Hand & Neil Iceton – A Holiday In Beta Centauri (Innate)

You might have caught Mark Hand slipping out classy, jazz-inflected deep house over the last few years, but his roots run much deeper. Hailing from the North East of the UK, he’s darted around different underground music ventures, one of the most notable being Cubic Space Collective. The project with Neil Iceton and Jez Nichol first manifested in the mid 90s on Roost Records as a kind of melodic acid techno (which ultimately borders somewhere near trance), and also cropped up as a retrospective cassette release on Opal Tapes in 2015. A year later, the three of them brought the gear back out for a live reunion at Freerotation which saw their sound tip towards ascendant Detroit techno, delivered with veteran authenticity and musical chops in abundance.

This release from Hand and Iceton on Innate follows very much in that vein, offering a starry-eyed vision of techno with explicit Underground Resistance influences. In his other work, Hand has demonstrated plenty of times how adept he is playing keys, and that musicality shines through in every chord pattern and spiralling arp. From ‘Binary System’s beauteous electro to the spiky machine funk of ‘Beyond The Nebula’, there’s no shock revelations here but rather a perfectly executed strain of classic techno by two lifelong devotees to the craft.

OW

New World – Souvenirs (Riotvan)

Perhaps not so aptly, New World is not a new alias. Started in 2013 as a means for Leipzig-based producer Interviews (Markus Gebauer) to explore the weirder edges of synthy dance music, only one vinyl 12” has surfaced before, in 2013. ‘Night Stalker’ emerged to reveal a remarkably well-developed sound, touching on the washed out vocal synthwave styles pushed by bands like Chromatics and Kavinsky in the more popular music sphere. 

But ‘Souvenirs’, a newer EP from 2020, has a harder edged, nu-Italo bent. In underground circuits, this dancier style now chimes much more freely with producers like Bell Towers or E. Myers. Reissued for the first time, you’ll be surprised to hear that most of the tracks here were made in 2015. Still in 2022, they sound fresh as ever, and slowly reveal a sophistication not immediately heard from the off. ‘Fade Out’ finds its charm in sounding like dashed-off yet no less affective New Order instrumental. Simple and clean, it allows wonkier and more layered bits like ‘Glances’ and ‘Enough!’ to reach our ears with a cleansed palette. ‘Poeme’ is our favourite track: phase-cancelled claps, reminiscent pads, and murmurations in French all make it sound just like the lovechild of a Depeche Mode dub and a French house underside. All classy, glassy tunes here. 

JIJ

This week’s reviewers: Patrizio Cavliere, Jude Iago James, Oli Warwick.