Gudu Vinyl & CDs

Review: Hiver have a solid ten years of releases behind them for labels like Curle, Vidab and Fides, but now they're making the move to Peggy Gou's Gudu for a trip into celestial tech house of the highest order. This is sparkling, fantasy acid house with a slant towards glistening cascades of synth work reaching for euphoric peaks. There's a steadfast sense of melancholy folded into these tracks, whether it's the yearning string pads hovering over 'Dream Universe' or the augmented chords hovering over 'Purple Phaze'. 'Lodash' has an electro-disco tint and 'Higher Space' takes a slick approach to 90s stabs, rounding out a stadium-sized house record that fits right in on Gudu.

Review: Akua Grant's outings as Lady Blacktronika are always worth checking, and her first full outing on Peggy Gou's Gudu label is no different. 'Baby I Got It' is full-on aural madness - a bombastic blend of beefy, redlined house drums, ghostly chords, pitched-up vocal samples and discordant minor key melodies - while 'Sing The Blues' is a deliciously drowsy chunk of wayward, dub-flecked deep house that's as beautiful as it is trippy. Best of all though is the locked-in deep house hypnotism of 'Hold My Hand', which features some superbly soulful vocal samples, metronomic bass and spacey electronic textures. Octa Octa provides a fine remix of that cut, too, re-imaging it as a stomping slab of lo-fi, funk-fuelled breakbeat house headiness.