R&S Vinyl & CDs

Review: The collaborator of choice for James Blake, Airhead has been wisely taking his time to develop on his own terms, sticking largely to his preferred stable at Brainmath to release his unique brand of utterly decayed 21st century beat music. Now though he steps up to R&S with a delicate 2-tracker that sees his burgeoning sound get a touch more full-bodied. "Wait" highlights the man's guitar talents, letting languid notes ring out over a typically deconstructed beat. "South Congress" however echoes Art of Noise and other such elegant experimentalists in its bombastic composition. Highly recommended.

Review: R&S Records warmed up on what was another fruitful year with the first full release from recent addition Bullion, and what a revelation it is! There's always been a craft and ingenuity to whatever the London producer has released, be it that Beach Boys meets Dilla debut or the stunningly inventive and psychedelic almost-album for Young Turks, but Say Arr Ee fully reveal's Bullion's new found confidence in his singing voice. This addition to Bullion's arsenal was first revealed on "Ralph", his contribution to the R&S compilation IOTDXI, and is explored fully on the two tracks here. On the title track Bullion chooses to mask it amidst a typically sumptuous pop arrangement built around oven warm synths, it is however overshadowed by the B Side. "What Does She Know" combines Bullion's undeniable craft for hazy electronic psychedelia with an actual song and deserves to be appreciated on a level equal to sometime label mate James Blake.

Review: It's a testament to the success of R&S 2.0 that the imprint's release schedule can quite happily swerve between the heavy dancefloor artillery of Blawan and Lone and the more intricate and delicately layered musings of acts such as Cloud Boat. The work of Tom Clark, this two track debut 10" demonstrates his strengths as both a songwriter and crafter of bass laden swing. "Lions On The Beach" showcases the latter, with a clacking 2 step rhythm engulfed by flushed piano touches, foggy vocal swirls and the sort of bass that comes to life on the right system. Clark's vocal talent is much more apparent on the gently coaxing "Bastion", which subtly slips into a cavernous thump midway through. It's too easy to proclaim Cloud Boat the new pretender to the throne of Blake, though fans of the swept fringed one will find much to like here.

Review: "The two opposing ends of R&S's historical spectrum collide on this ten inch as the track that marked Model 500's return to the imprint after a fourteen year absence gets taken apart and put back together in gloriously diverse fashion by two rising talents. It's a near exercise in futility to try and separate these two remixes of Model 500's "OFI" and proclaim one the winner, as both the submissions from Bullion and Space Dimension Controller are teeming at the brink with ideas that radicalise the template of the original. Anyone who indulged in the recent non album from Bullion will be fully aware of this producer's capacity to twist through tempos and rhythms at will and make it all work. That approach is more than replicated on his "Rivertrance Remix" which on first inspection sounds like three tracks in one. Galloping along via a bottomed out kraut groove, Bullion swerves through a collage of dizzying psychedelic sounds and effects in the space of four and a bit minutes which laugh generously in the face of categorisation. The flipside "Evasive Funk" remix from Celtic astronaut Space Dimension Controller retains the austere electro funk pulse of the original from Atkins, Banks and Taylor but sharpens the pace markedly, embellishing the bass with a schizophrenic menace that is matched by the sheer depth of percussive layers and synthesized touches.

Review: Sensitive types Vondelpark return to their spiritual home R&S Records with Dracula, a plaintive ride through R&B inflected beats, illustrious sweeps of guitars and twinkling synths, while mournfully British croons tell the story leading up to an end result fuelled by the legacy of James Blake and Mount Kimbie. The impossibly young Happa maintains his Blawan referencing blaze upwards, completely flipping the script for the remix, plunging raw vocal lifts into a murky bottomless well of disparate beats and wraiths of samples and noise to a remarkable end.