The best new singles this week
The big ones from the past seven
SINGLE OF THE WEEK
J: Kenzo – Traverse (ZamZam Sounds)
ZamZam have a habit of drawing extra levels of dub out of producers more commonly found baiting dancefloors. The Portland label has previously featured the likes of DJ Madd, Danny Scrilla, Von D and J. Sparrow all dialling in their own styles and giving them an even stronger dose of dub to match the ZamZam vibe. It’s not that they have to make their sound throwback, and certainly this is still music to dance to, but in all cases these artists have an established approach which is rooted in dubwise soundsystem culture. Something about the way ZamZam operates encourages artists to dig a little deeper into those influences and deliver something honest and respectful to the scene’s strong sense of tradition.
J: Kenzo has plenty going on via his Artikal Music label and drops for the likes of 31 Records, while further back he’s laid down solid foundations with Tempa and even helmed one of the fabled Dubstep Allstars mix CDs. On his third outing for ZamZam, the Kent-born producer brings everything needed to send a dance spinning out, demonstrating why 140 remains such a potent field of exploration. On ‘Traverse’ the split between double and half-time is teased to perfection, maintaining an upward thrust of tense, sizzling hats and insistent low frequency percussion. It’s a fierce rhythm track which understates the fills, breaks and drops to keep you locked in like a proper stepper should.
‘Deuce’ however flips the script somewhat by swerving into garage territory. The beat is a 2-step snapper with all the punch you’d expect from an upfront club production, but Kenzo’s still mindful of the situation, and there’s a liberal amount of dub poured over the proceedings. In the context of the beats, the dub techno synth pulses calls to mind the early 2562 releases, but with a slightly less angular groove at play. The best thing about Kenzo’s approach is that, in exercising restraint and prioritising meditation, he’s crafted a versatile piece of dub abstraction which could serve as a potent bridge or gear shift for the right kind of 140 set.
OW
Gary Martin – Organic Players Club (DET313)
Once considered one of the Motor City’s best-kept secrets, over the years Gary Martin has emerged from the imposing shadow cast by those operating at the pinnacle of the Detroit underground. Though perhaps not the best-known techno purveyor operating in the city limits, Martin now finds himself occupying the space his impressive catalogue rightfully deserves. Releasing hard-hitting sounds under various aliases – Gigi Galaxy and Teknotika among the most recognisable – he’s stayed true to his subterranean path, with 30-odd-years of lovingly crafted music helping to cement his place in Detroit’s hall of techno fame.
The DET13 re-issue label he set up alongside Yossi Amoyal has helped shine light on pearls from his Teknotika back catalogue, pitching hard-to-find (or expensive-to-buy) highlights alongside newly-formed edits and remixes. ‘Organic Players Club’ does exactly this, presenting seven archival and re-tweaked cuts across two slabs of wax, introducing vintage Martin sounds to new audiences while saving die-hard fans and collectors a fair few quid in the process. The EP opens with Amoyal’s extended version of ‘I’ll Be Back I promise’, with its emotive strings and sustained bass combining blissfully over tight drums and rolling percussion, setting the tone for the rhythmic mastery and soul-enhanced sensibilities that follow. Jacking dancefloor moments arrive in the hyperactive form of ‘All Night Long Girl’ and the no-less propulsive ‘Be Your Own Girl’, while the collection bursts into life via the magnificently vibrant ‘In Ryhtem’, which is presented in two essential versions here.
The cascading drums of the original power the groove over cheeky bass licks and infectious vocal cuts before sinister strings add atmosphere to the rhythm, while the dizzying drum patterns of the ‘House Mix’ are a dead-cert for fist-pumping main room moments. The full-bodied beats and alien harmonics of ‘Manhattan’ ensure there’s no let up in floor-focused dynamism, and closing jam ‘Aurora Aura’ maintains the kinetic thrust with jazzed-up vibes merrily dancing over big boy drums.
PC
Takuya Matsumoto – 85-88 (Clone Jack For Daze)
Japanese producer Takuya Matsumoto ends a five-year hiatus with his latest entry under the Clone banner, crafting a set of retro-centred house jams on the ’85-88′ EP. The packaging seems to suggest the material was plucked from the producer’s long-lost archives, but, while Matsumoto has been at least somewhat active since as far back as 2001, the ’80s most likely arrived too soon for the Tokyo-based artist to have found his studio groove.
Other than that, it would be very easy to believe the four tracks included were forged during house music’s portent dawn, such is the authenticity of their production and the tone of their content. Matsumoto certainly doesn’t appear to revel in the limelight, with his apparent elusive nature matched by something of an irregular release pattern. Nonetheless, the quality of his releases on the likes of Clone Royal Oak, Fina, Meda Fury and Iero have helped him garner a deservedly lofty reputation among deep house purists, with each high-quality release embodied with an unquestionable allure.
The EP brims with vintage charm, with analogue synths and FM swells pitched against classic machine drums over a set of Chicago-themed deep house grooves. Opener ’85’ evolves as an early Fingers roller, with acid bass blended with atmospheric pads and sturdy analogue drums. Next, the euphoric pads, spoken words and affecting bass hits of ’86’ continue the evocative drive, before ’87’ amplifies the jack as it strides deep into raw, acid house territory.
Finally, ’88’ is perhaps the most deviant of the number, with sensual vocal chops simmering over sparse drums and divergent synth bass. Fans of early house and golden-age Chicago deepness will likely be enthralled by each track, with ’85-88′ marking a most welcome return for Matsumoto San.
PC
Ke Thu – Like A Beacon Against The Fog (Still Techno US)
The mantra of Ke Thu (Tim Barrett and Steven Savroupoulos) is to earnestly “explore techno and everything it is capable of.” Not many artists set out such a wide scope, but given that it’s the philosophical backing of an artist duo who’ve been going for a good 10 years or so, it’s a playbook that clearly provides enough momentum for them to keep going.
Is, for example, techno capable of breaking out of its formalistic genre constraints? Does techno necessarily have to be about the encroachment of machines on music and man? Contrary to its name, ‘Like A Beacon Against The Fog’ hardly answers these questions, serving us more fog than beacons. With that in mind, however, the EP does explore yet one strand of what we might call techno, with further explorations clearly reserved for future releases. That strand we might as well call: dubby lo-fi techno. Ke Thu’s conception of ‘Reality’ is as such: sonic smoke and mirrors; great ambiences of contradiction obscuring our vision; chains rattling up the stairs like spectres of past and future embedded in memory palaces. Through techno, the pair nail is what reality is: dialectic and confusing, not concrete and sane.
The title track appears only as a remix by one Jerome Derradji, not as an original. Closer inspection reveals it to be a sort of fusion of the first and third tracks. It sounds rather like a subdued version of Jon Hopkins’ ‘Collider’; push-pull washes of sidechained dub ambiences hurl themselves across vast plains of low-pass, while more immediate hi-hats machinate in the front and centre. ‘As Every Massage’, meanwhile, is the real meditative highlight. Its absence of much treble begs us to turn it up, to listen out for the less perceptible details in the much-(unfairly)-maligned midrange. Clearly, Detroit techno aspires to much more nowadays than mere machine futurism; Ke Thu’s latest is a peaceful dirge for human-machine unity, a dialogue with the primitively uncertain.
JIJ
Pangaea – Fuzzy Logic (Hessle Audio)
There’s been so much to admire about Hessle Audio’s genre-shaping output over the past 15 years. ‘Fuzzy Logic’ sees the label’s very own Pangaea in devastating form, vividly demonstrating just why the imprint has maintained its position as one of the UK underground’s most vital, boundary-pushing sonic beacons. Between them, David Kennedy, Ben Thompson, and Kevin McAuley have done a sensational job curating a varied, endlessly evolving but magnificently coherent and recognisable Hessle Audio sound stamp. Here, the latter dons his familiar Pangaea cap to present an exemplar of just that, serving a pair of tracks that each hit exceptionally hard while being endowed with a subtle elegance that belies their rhythmic force.
McAuley has been responsible for his fair share of the label’s memorable moments, and the EP’s title track smacks with as much force as the best of his catalogue. Pounding drums drive ominous pads and floating synth textures, with rhythmic pulses darting over grubby bass and jagged machine drum claps for a stimulating dance igniter. Possibly even better is the b-side track ‘Still Flowing Water’, where Detroit-inspired chords blend with detuned synths and dramatic string stabs over brisk drums, combining a retro-leaning rave aesthetic with a palpably contemporary production sheen.
Tough yet nuanced, both tracks here are primed for the floor, and both fulfil their intention to stunning effect.
PC
Caroline Polachek – Billions (Perpetual Novice US)
Caroline Polachek’s ‘Billions’ was released in February this year, as a follow-up single to the pop-turned-hyperpop artist’s last album ‘Pang’. Keeping up with the necessary pace of such a dizzyingly accelerationist genre, it’s already been confirmed that Polachek’s next album is due for release just one year later.
With Polachek having been on the scene for a good amount of time, ‘Billions’ is the latest addition to the pot, and this week sees a release on vinyl. We thought this an intriguing manoeuvre. Even today, the supposedly ‘ultra-digital’ hyperpop can’t escape the primitive, entropic physicality of wax. Similarly, reading between the lines of the music of artists like Polachek – artists at the bleeding edge of music today – helps explain a lot about where we find ourselves. ‘Billions’ cryptically regales the tale of our narrator’s whirlwind romance with a partner.
“Psycho… priceless… Lies like a sailor, But he loves like a painter… Hand it over, broker… Cornucopia, Can my cup overflow with (Billions)”. This man has something good going on, and Polachek can only express it in economic, quantitative terms – but, of course, she can’t help but also admit he’s “priceless”. She also calls him a psycho: oh, but to
Polachek’s lyrics straddle the contradiction of quantity and quality. Meanwhile, her music is both human (using the voice) and robotic (working with some of the most wacked-out and alien producers on the planet, Danny L Harle and Oneohtrix Point Never). The remix of OPN’s ‘Long Road Home’ is apt; through the unusual power of her voice, she humanizes an artist who has only ever operated in the shadows of the vaporized 80s – as retrograde machine.
This interplay of the human on the inhuman is key: hyperpop is some of the most contradictory music on the planet. That’s why it commands so much energy.
JIJ
Keita Sano – Legacy From Leyton EP (ROW)
Okayama-based Keita Sano has been busy slinging out variations of modern club music with a flair that’s hard to second guess. From 1080p and Let’s Play House to Discos Capablanca, Mister Saturday Night and Mad Love, he now returns to a label he helped inaugurate in 2016 – Germany’s Row – and it’s interesting to note where change has taken place since the Bowl Of Water EP.
If anything, there’s a more minimal mentality guiding Sano’s work on Legacy From Leyton. A grounding in soundsystem dynamics is still absolutely present, but rather than wielding boisterous breakbeats all over the mix and pulling in brightly melodic samples for jarring juxtapositions, Sano sounds more at home shaping out atmospherics and working with space on the likes of ‘Blur Ceramics’. There’s a greater focus to the overall progression of the track without forsaking the experimental instinct which has marked Sano out since the start.
‘Inner Hall’ deals in a more intricate, snagging strain of broken techno which could easily be flung around a dance in the Hessle-Timedance axis, retaining punchy immediacy in the drums but rewarding the attentive listener with micro details of exquisite sound design. ‘Legacy From Leyton’ nods back to Sano’s earlier work with its hyphy synth stabs in the later stages, but still there’s greater emphasis on steadfast drum work. Dayzero, also bursting out of Japan’s bassweight underground at present, is on hand to turn out a suitable update on the track which adds more psychedelic twists to the sound without derailing its stout club attributes.
OW
London-based label Make A Dance continue their gloriously straightforward, floor-filling manifesto, this time inviting an ensemble cast to work their respective limb-shaking magic on the first in their new various artists series.
Since launching in 2001 with their impossibly propulsive ‘Somebody’ EP, the MAD team have busied themselves fashioning evolving chapters of equally effective dance-focused house and disco-related jams. The recent addition of an edit-based wing has poured yet more fuel onto the disco fire, and ‘VA Vol 1’ seems set to further enhance the imprint’s already formidable reputation. First up, Hard Drive Library layer rousing disco strings and rolling bass over a thumping house beat for a straight-up disco-house pumper, before exotic arpeggios and alien synths abound on the homespun ‘Nanyuki Nights’, with its infectious bass, off-kilter sweeps and looped vocal chops.
On the flip, Liverpool-based wonder Andy Ash rides in with the deliciously deviant ‘Drums For Acid’, pitched directly at the warehouse and brimming with strobe-lit swagger. Tom Carruthers’ ‘Forgotten Grove’ adds a sense of saucer-eyed marvel to the record, with trippy synths cascading over snappy drums and sub-rooted bass. Finally, ‘That It’ from Asa Tate sees us into the small hours, with growling bass and otherworldly synths building to a gently rush-inducing climax.
PC
After Ampoule Records’ recent reissuing roll, this time they turn their attentions to the titillating talents of the labels’ own founder, Pub. And so, it is revealed: what sounds to be the movements of a record label operating as a ‘company’ is really just one talented guy putting out his own formerly unreleased stuff.
‘Autumn’ marks Pub’s first original release under the name in almost a decade. Here’s the melting pot: throw in the paradisiacal stutters of Voitax or Barker, and the detuned emu-tracker sine synths of Aphex Twin, and out pops the potent potion of sound that Pub most positively pushes (when the brew’s done condensing, that is). This is essentially music for autumn ambles. It is remarkably happy. The catch is that we, like the seasons, are no longer free; we’re pets in an AI’s artificial biome, kept happy only by digital conservation and carefully planned ecology, human beings studied remotely in the ‘wild’.
As the bot flicks the switch on today’s sun-up, so too does the artificial birdsong of the dawn chorus, on ‘Autumn’. The track is unstoppably optimistic. Meanwhile, ‘Fall In Leaves’ describes dusk, as drums creep in over the same melodic motif, and the sun (really just a giant bulb) gives way the night phase of this terraformed world.
JIJ
This week’s reviewers: Oli Warwick, Patricio Cavaliere, Jude Iago James.