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The best new singles this week

Our writers share their top tips

SINGLE OF THE WEEK

Daniel Wang – DSDN EP (Paloma)

Daniel Wang makes a welcome return to the new releases rack with a typically refined slice of meta-disco headiness, serving four astrally-charged versions on the ‘DSDN’ EP. While it may be fair to say that his output has slowed somewhat in recent years, the quality of his productions remains every bit as vital as ever, and his first outing since 2019’s Hugh Masekela cover ‘Don’t Go Lose This’ is every bit as cultured as the best of his roundly excellent work.

Interestingly, there’s at least one particularly noble reason for the three-year gap between releases this time around, as the Berlin-based artist found an especially worthwhile way to busy himself over the last couple of years. While the dance community (along with the world at large) grappled with pandemic-enforced stasis, Wang found himself a day job working at a local Covid-19 vaccine centre, presumably approaching the role with the same energy and diligence that has typified his approach to music.

Exhibiting all of the class and production prowess demonstrated during his most prolific period — an era that saw him release routinely compelling work on the likes of Environ, Eskimo, Rush Hour, Sonar Kollektiv and his own Balihu — ‘DSDN’ resides in the glorious realms between deep house and future disco. The EP opens with an epic vocal version, where heavy synth bass, sprightly vibraphone melodies and infectious guitar licks caress spoken word vocals over a ten-plus-minute stereo cruise.

The ‘303 Instrumental’ strips things back while subbing the vocal with a simmering acid line, while the ‘303 City Dub’ presents delay-laden vocal cuts in a mesmerising ‘version’ style. Finally, the ‘Instrumental’ allows the full orchestration and imaginative chord progressions of the original space to sparkle, with honeyed melodies and celestial harmonies blissfully combined. It’s an absolute joy to hear new music from Daniel. Here’s hoping we won’t have to wait another three years for more. 

PC

Sam KDC / Flaminia – Grounding (Samurai Music)

Spanish techno label Samurai Music have used the term ‘the Autonomic wave’ to describe what we might have also called ‘kinetic techno’ or ‘tactile ambient’ music of late. Employing far more layering than might have ever been heard before in techno thus far, this is a strand of dance music that aims to unite every aspect of the human psyche – not just the body.

The collaborating artists behind the latest EP for the label, Sam KDC and Flaminia, know this intuitively if not in the abstract. Ideas of ‘depth’ and ‘texture’ are central to their music-making process for ‘Grounding’, and are applied to a style – techno – beyond the usual Overton window of where music can acceptably be heavily textured and sound designy. Depth, texture and sound design are usually in the purview of experimental electronica, ‘neuro’-funk, lowercase, etc. But techno, by contrast, has a history of being deeply conservative, anti-sound design, hardware-jammy and rough n’ ready. Not to deep.

They say, though, that dance music tracks are like sonic skeletons: 170bpm is the rough tempo range, and while KDC and Flaminia do stick to this more or less rigid time metric, everything that occurs around this bony frame is alive, pulsing with blood, plasma and conscious movement. It’s all very unlike the ultra-rational techno we’re used to. ‘Bloom’ is a halftime jungle, blurring ideas of tribality and urbanity, realising them as strands of the same overall force. ‘Bitter Root’ repots a long-held psychic belief into a new soil, with its painfully häxan soundscapes and plodding drums evoking the frightening feeling of unlearning problematic core values and replacing them with new ones. ‘Monsoon’ notes the purifying rains that follow, with an airy and sparse feel, while ‘Gaia’ recognises, through the use of both cavernous reverb and up-close electrical zaps, a Lovelockian System Science of dance music.

JIJ

Deadbeat – Things Fall Apart (Newdubhall)

Scott Monteith has seen his fair share of modernist dub permutations during his tenure as Deadbeat. Way back at the turn of the century he was running some visionary digital diversions into micro-dub in tandem with his burgeoning house and techno abstractions. Albums like Something Borrowed, Something Blue and New World Observer helped define the sound of glitchy electronica labels like ~scape, offering a new path for experimental music absolutely rooted in the structures and ethics of dub.

Dub has been adopted and adapted in all sorts of different ways since the pioneering days of Tubby, Perry et al, but there’s something about those principles of skeletal space, echo as art and particular shuffled grooves which translates into so many sound palettes without losing its fundamental essence. Monteith has demonstrated this in a multitude of ways since those early albums, and on the other side of the world and in a wholly different way, so have the crew orbiting Japanese label Newdubhall. With just a few scattered releases featuring groups like Undefined, they’ve set out their own kind of avant-garde dub which still satisfies the criteria for any proper idea of what dub is.

Hearing Monteith slink onto Newdubhall for a two-track 10”, it’s thoroughly pleasing to find him exploring terrain which feels nostalgic for his early days. ‘Things Fall Apart’ has the same dislocated, beatless quality which made those ~scape albums such a treat to get lost in, with a haunting thread of melodica charting a course through daubs of dub chords and bass which move with the amorphous, arrhythmic quality of a lava lamp. In their constant, subtle shifting, it feels more like a piece of systems music set swimming off into the swirl of the mixing desk rather than a conscious composition.

By contrast, ‘Adieu Chez Cherie’ is a sharply focused steppa with Monteith’s signature techno tropes on show. It’s masterfully brooding and still utterly in thrall to the echo chamber, and there’s even some snatches of heavily delayed human voice humming through the mix. If you needed an example of how to keep the dub at the forefront of dub techno, this would be it.

OW

Alexander Robotnick – Problemes D’amour (Hot Elephant)

Electro pioneer Alexander Robotnick’s seminal ‘Problemes D’amour’ is revisited by Italian imprint, Hot Elephant, presented here in three essential new versions that include interpretations from Detroit titans Kenny Dixon Jr and Carl Craig. Maurizio Dami has been a beloved and active contributor to the contemporary dance canon for a good many years, with a catalogue that extends almost as far back as the birth of movement as we recognise it today.

Best known under his familiar Alexander Robotnick alias, the Italian artist has delivered plenty of highlights across his decades-spanning career, and 1983’s ‘Problemes D’amour’ remains one of his finest hours. Achieving remix justice when tackling a tune as memorable as this is no easy ask and best left to the masters, so it’s both pleasing and entirely fitting that KDJ and C2 are drafted in to work their respective magic (as opposed to some of the more cack-handed edit cowboys operating in today’s hyper-saturated field).

Before we turn our attention to the Motor City maestros’ efforts, there’s the not-so-small matter of Robotnick’s stunning ‘Live Version’, a delightfully limber take on the original that makes the most of the iconic orchestration while introducing an infectious looseness of feel. The affecting chords, searing lead synths, acidic bass and shimmering rhythm guitar are retained in KDJ’s deft edit, too, with the key parts more or less remaining intact aside from some crafty manipulation and typically effective arrangement tweaks. Shaking things up a fair few degrees further, Carl Craig takes a more full-bodied approach, stripping back the instrumentation and reframing the parts over a deviantly shuffling drum groove. Also included here is a cover of ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’, the dramatic orchestral track made famous by its inclusion in Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here, Florence-based artist Lapo Lombardi joins Dami under the Italcimenti moniker to reframe the track as a cosmic techno joyride, presenting the familiar refrains over a rousing club tempo. While it’s certainly a fun aside, the reworks of the title track are likely to find the most love and, considering the calibre of the protagonists, that should come as little surprise. 

PC

Leo Anibaldi – Classics (Vargmal)

There are a few cult totems of Italian techno who don’t always get the plaudits they deserve. I’m talking here about the likes of Lory D, or a little further on Marco Passarani – the artists who were doing really freaky things with the techno template from an early stage. Leo Anibaldi absolutely falls into that camp, having started his own ACV label in 1991 and evolving from a nosebleed acid techno miscreant into a true sonic explorer who wound up on Rephlex for the masterful Void LP by 1996.

New label Vargmal are taking a particular focus on two vintage Anibaldi pieces – ‘Muta 5’ from the 1993 LP Muta, and ‘Endurance 4’ from a 12” in 1994. Taken out of context, the vision Anibaldi presented with these two pieces is truly staggering. The former twitches in a cyclical whirlpool of scratchy percussion and forlorn bleeps that sounds like it could swing with the best dubby broken techno of the modern era. The latter is a dense, clamouring expedition through humid drones and space-shaping impulses, powered by a tribal patter which would melt effortlessly into a set from Lena Wilikens (albeit pitched down a tad).

Vargmal opted to bring in a next generation Italo-legend to offer some fresh insight on these two remarkable pieces, and Donato Dozzy makes perfect sense dealing with such source material as the links to his own work seem abundantly clear. Dozzy’s take on ‘Muta 5’ is surprisingly sprightly, working with pattering arps and light touch percussion clocked with pinpoint accuracy to the original framework. His version of ‘Endurance 4’ is more surprising, letting a melancholic strain of synth-led sound bleed in over the brooding atmospherics of the original. It’s trancey in the way that a lot of modern deep techno is, but never saccharine, as though Dozzy homed in on the faint impressions of melody hidden away in the original and unfolded them for all to hear.

OW

Ex Pontoon – Coming Back (Zen 2000)

So much of modern day pop music is willingly complicit in a sense of aesthetic grandeur – gloss and pomp – but certain factions are shunning this greedy tendency. LA-based 7”s label Zen 2000 are one of these outfits, erring on the side of releasing the music for its own sake, and taking on an ironically shallow and low-key, low-fi demeanour.

Their latest is by Ex. Pontoon (Tim Jones), a publicly mysterious artist, producer and vocalist local to the label, with influences from Stereolab to Actress. This being their first vinyl release, it’s important we recognise that these are some of Jones’ most intriguing bits of music so far, with its wilful obscurity lending it the status of ‘precious relic’ as opposed to ‘pesky weed’. 

The artist’s influences from dub, to prog, to ‘80s coldwave manifest in all manner of combinations, but ‘Coming Back’ and ‘Automatic Discipline’ tend more towards moody lounge-dub and dancehall. Imagine the abstract sonic personae of Dean Blunt and Tom Waits were to meet in a waiting room, or a nail bar, and shoot the shit; this would be what we’d hear. The latter track is particularly beautiful, with relatively organic guitar sounds fading in and out of step with a pacey juice riddim. Glorious.

JIJ

Natalie Smash – New Start (Still Music)

Twelve long years have passed since vocalist Natalie Smash teamed up with NYC creative dons In Flagranti for her first appearance on wax. Quite why it’s taken so long for a follow-up is anyone’s guess: her distinctive singing style feels perfectly suited to subterranean club productions. Back in 2010, her ‘Through A Rabbit Hole’ debut on Codek won plenty of fans, thanks in no small part to an alluring set of remixes — including a splendid reshape from cosmic heroes, Daniele Baldelli and Marco Diongi. Fittingly titled ‘New Start’, her long overdue return arrives on Chicago’s Still Music with a magnificent trio of reshapes from San Francisco’s always imaginative Loose Control Band, AKA DJ Spun and Jonah Sharp.

Launching proceedings is the brilliant ‘Live In SF’ mix, a gorgeously grubby heads-down groove featuring seductive vocal chops skipping over deviant acid bass and chugging drums as off-world synths meander through the audio haze. The ‘NY Club Mix’ is no less vital, perhaps a few degrees more pumping thanks to a driving tempo, fist-pumping snare rolls and a floor-friendly arrangement. Next, Mystic Bill’s Chicago mix is a retro-fused warehouse stormer, the seductive vocal perfectly attuned to the strobe-lit aesthetic as rolling toms power the stripped-but-stirring groove. Finally, Loose Control step back in with the ‘NJ Sample version’ — another nocturnal affair complete with brooding bass and space-age synths pitched over crunching machine drums. Highly recommended.

PC

Second Skin / Psyk – Sense Of Purpose (Blueprint)

This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve fallen deeply in love with the musical output of Spanish techno artist Psyk, so by writing this review, we risk sounding like initiates into some kind of cult. But – let’s suspend our disbelief for a minute – even if there were a cult of Psyk (techno cults aren’t unheard of, by the way, look into Aleksi Perala) and even if we were describable as cult initiates, then we can’t be blamed. Of course, theological themes have begun to abound in Psyk’s music, which is why we’ve taken an interest in this EP.

Case in point: this new collab with Oscar Mulero, called ‘Sense Of Purpose’, demonstrates the intrinsic theocracy of techno. With titles ‘Reformed Theology’ and ‘No Escape’, this stuffy and maximized sonic panopticon of a four-track EP implicitly recognises the (perhaps problematic, perhaps life-affirming) religious element of techno. As the dystopian, arpeggiated wiles of ‘Reformed Theology’ allude, the Protestant Reformation gave rise to Calvinism, which still to this day religiously underpins the economic policies that enabled Detroit-based, ‘Motor City’ Fordism – which in turn gave birth to techno in the first place.

It’s no wonder, then, that the following track is called ‘No Escape’, and consists of a four-by-four kick drum and a weird burbly synth sound. The latter more or less sounds like the futile attempt by biology to escape a robotic, organized religious prison. In other words, there really does seem to be ‘No Escape’. You, a human, can’t escape techno because you already are a cult initiate into the religion of industry.

JIJ

Landyhill – Freaky Mind (PPU)

People’s Potential Unlimited caught putting out a cult 80s reissue? For a lesser label, this kind of unsurprising move might signal a creative cul-de-sac, but somehow Andrew Morgan’s DC cats can keep coming up with goods so hot you just can’t accept they’re not already staple classics. This time around it’s the job of Alex ‘landy’ Hill to get us jacking. While he might not be a household name, landyhill has some very interesting pedigree which starts right back at the dawn of turntablism in California. When you fire up the ’24 Track Mind’ version of ‘Freaky Mind’ it’s not hard to join the dots with Uncle Jamm’s Army, Sexual Harassment and Egyptian Lover, when electro funk was popping off and the vibe was as nasty as can be.

landyhill had his share of success with Timex Social Club’s single ‘Rumours’, but the two versions of ‘Freaky Mind’ carry their own clout through the sheer class of his programming. It’s quintessential 808 sequencing madness, but especially on the aforementioned ’24 Track Mind’ version it feels like we’ve already left South Beach behind and linked up with the Cybotrons of this world somewhere on the edge of the atmosphere. When it comes to badass proto-techno, look no further than this utterly essential drop from a label that never misses.

OW

Milton Jackson – Closure EP (Freerange) 

We’ve certainly missed hearing the authentically-spun deep house grooves for which Glaswegian artist Milton Jackson is so rightfully renowned, so his return from a production hiatus is most certainly a welcome addition to this week’s new release list. He became something of a Freerange regular since first appearing on the label back in 2006, helping shape the imprint’s recognisable US-influenced, UK-rooted sound signature with a stream of well-received offerings. Well and truly back in the groove, Jackson returns to the label with the ‘Closure EP’, featuring four immaculately carved jams that mark his return to the fold in fine style.

To set things off, Jackson enlists the keyboard wizardry of London-based musician and producer Ski Oakenfull, with the pair serving a breezy, jazz-informed groove imbued with equal measures of dexterous instrumentation and dancefloor bump. Next, ‘Day In, Day Out’ finds Milton doing what he does best, with heart-felt instrumentation pitched over stirring house drums as stirring strings and driving stabs blissfully combined. Nowhere is the shuffling US influence more keenly felt than in the title track, ‘Closure’, with sturdy drums powering sumptuous chord progressions, lush pads and vocal chops over energetic bass notes. Finally, bonus track ‘Birdsong’ is resurrected from a previously digital-only release, its tropical vibrations and low-slung thrust deservingly committed to wax to see out the EP in style.  

PC

NLXLB – Dirty Vision EP (18437 Records)

Nico Lahs has been trucking for many a year now, slinking out classy strains of deep house for labels as respected as Moods & Grooves, Metamorphic and Rawax. Italian though he may be, his sound taps into that US-influenced kind of rugged deep house that favours MPC bounce and the warm wobble of analogue synth work, and that’s a quality he carries through to the NLXLB project. The alias debuted on Simoncino’s HotMix last year, and now gets a full solo outing on 18437. The Local Talk sublabel has been expressly founded to focus on a deeper, more techno-informed strain of house – it doesn’t feel right to call it tech house though – and the prior releases from the late Michel Baumann (aka Soulphiction / Jackmate) are a fine barometer for what to expect from this refined three tracker.

Lahs makes the drums shuffle and clatter with a natural verve, while the bubbling monosynth bassline on ‘Dazed Dream’ melts like honey across the lower register. Beats bass and pads aren’t exactly novel ingredients, but it’s what you do with them that counts, and Lahs knows how to etch feeling into each of these parts to make a captivating whole. ‘Dirty Vision’ has a whispy, head in the clouds finish which contrasts with the relative urgency of the tempo, creating some kind of mysterious magic which might well take a very late morning party into some interesting places. The wildest twist is saved for last though, as Lahs slaps down some writhing, wriggling mutant funk on ‘Synthetic Wars’ that will reward the bravest DJs with some truly freaky scenes, if you can handle all that swing and the off-beat analogue zaps accenting the crooked groove.

OW

Genius Of Time – Sunswell (Oath)

 Swedish duo Nils Krogh and Alexander Berg resume their combined Genius Of Time adventuring with yet another unmissable release, presenting three carefully crafted cuts on the ‘Sunswell’ EP. Though both have been making music for many a year, they first combined under the GOT banner back in 2010, and have since released a somewhat sporadic but always engaging body of deep-but-varied work. From the looped keys of ‘Drifting Back’ to the inspired sampling of ‘Houston We Have A Problem’, the jacking club flex of ‘Voxshot’ to the hallucinatory swirls of ‘Juno Jam’, the quality threshold of their work is nothing short of exceptional.

Their arrival on Oath is their first joint outing in three years, once again demonstrating an attention to detail and compositional knack that helps set them apart from the average deep house player. Steadily unfolding over a rolling rhythm, the evolving pads of title track ‘Sunswell’ set the scene for blissed-out keyboard melodies, building to a life-affirming crescendo pitched perfectly for sunrise meditations.

A little trippier, the psychedelic synths and hypnotic vocal slices of ‘Taurindo Shuffle’ make for a captivating late-night jaunt, with wiggy layers delicately combined over fizzing drums and sub-rooted bass. Finally, the discreetly Afro-infused rhythms of ‘Purple Motus’ propel dreamy melodies across a sea of dramatic strings and mesmerising vocal ripples, again building to a stirring crescendo as the arrangement skilfully unfurls.  

PC

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