Acid Waxa Vinyl & CDs

Review: Take care out there, Roy Of The Ravers is back with another round of boisterous hardware hack-outs on Acid Waxa. You can tell he means business on opening track "Supremacy Royale", a fast and mean-tempered slice of bleepy techno with brains to match its brawn. "Ambergris 9" is a more playful jam with wonderfully dated melodic lines lifted from the pantheon of BBC library music, and then "Time 2 Jack" spins off into strange, abrasive realms of experimental acid. The epic "En Trance 10" wheels its way through more than 15 minutes on the B-side, employing trancey bassline strategies to keep your brain locked on course for the full trip.

Review: Six years have now passed since cuts from Roy of the Ravers' brilliant '2 Late 4 Love' cassette made their debut on vinyl, via a highly limited EP that's now fiendishly hard to find. This '2023 Edition' of the in-demand EP offers two tracks from that 12" - pleasingly lo-fi acid jack-track '2 Late For Love (Part 1)' and the fuzzy, machine-driven deep house-goes-acid minimalism of 'Emotium' - plus a pair of favourites featured on the cassette version but not the previous vinyl release (the brain-melting acid electro jam 'Cwejman Acid (Part 2)' and the hissing, distorted TB-303 and TR-909 weight of 'Melchester Acid (Part 1)'. Throw in a bonus cut recorded in the same period ('Track 5') and you have an indispensable reissue.

Review: Arvid Whetman has plenty going for him at the moment. As Sexazoid he's dropping all kinds of off-kilter machine beats on excellent labels like Born Free, while as Your Planet Is Next he builds on appearances on Junk Yard Connections, Waving Hands, Opal Tapes, Studio Barnhus and Klasse to deliver this chirpy four-tracker to Acid Waxa. From the twee vocals to the playful synths and straight up drums, this is club music crafted for an immediate hit. Whetman makes this approach work magnificently though, liberally applying his musical personality to lo-fi deep house and roughshod acid, with "Heartbreaker" being a firm favourite thanks to its fulsome 303 bassline and hooky vocal mantras.