Repeat Germany Vinyl & CDs

Review: Repeat continue their exploration of Mark Ambrose's imperious tech house legacy with another double pack that will delight diggers and dismay sharks in equal measure. 'Harmony (Sun Mix)' is a truly dreamy cut that will go down a treat as we head towards sunnier dancefloor moments across the Northern Hemisphere. 'My Soul Your Soul' has a deadly broken beat edge to the drum programming, while 'Destiny Angel' creates a starry-eyed disco-house fusion that has to be heard to be believed. The quality and ingenuity spilling out of every one of these tracks is a marvel, and as a collection this release helps cement Ambrose's position as one of the finest artists to emerge from the mid 90s UK scene.

Review: UK tech house legend Mark Ambrose is now back with a third volume of his The Journey series on Richard Davis' reissue label Repeat. The revered veteran crafted plenty of the genre's best and most unique sounds and you can revisit three of them now. 'Acid' is a slow, deep and meandering monster with rubbery bass and undulating 303 lines. 'The Ghoulash Monster From Outer Space' is a more dark and tribal, chunky and sci-fi sound with rich sound designs and eerie atmospheres and '5 AM' closes on a serene deep tech groove. Ricardo Villalobos, Sonja Moonear and Marcel Dettmann are just some of the names who have played these jams over the years, which is a testament to their quality.

Review: Minimal heads will be chuffed to see that the third volume of the Dis Chronicles series has now arrived on Repeat. It is another stylish collection of Grant Dell beats starting with a cut as Chicago Transit Authority. 'Emotive' is a perfect blend of jazzy keys and skipping garage drums with deep house vibes and swirling pads to add extra heat. On the flipside, Dell links with Jay Tripwire for 'Cosmic Kebab' which leans more into tech house territory but as the title suggests has nice starry synth work and to close out, Dell goes it alone on 'Rhythmic Science' which looks you into his precise beat work and diffuse late night chords.

Review: The Repeat label is doing a great service to the culture of real tech house, nodding to that late 90s sound and carrying work from the likes of Jay Tripwire, Eddie Richards and now Grant Dell. The Dis Chronicles series hits part two with some further obscurities from back in the day which sound as relevant now as they were futuristic back then. 'Disco Hit' was a collaborative effort from Dell and Richie Littler, and it's utterly addictive thanks to those cheeky DX7 organ licks, while Dell's 'Up Yer Strasse Dub' of Len Lewis' 'Illicit' is chunky and dubby in equal measure. Dell's own 'Fari A Come' completes the set with a more overt drop into dub territory, sampling a true Jamaican legend and showing how the tech house sound could transplant onto backroom, head-nodding gear in style.

Review: A punctual reissue of a rare Eye 4 Sound tech-acid house party starter from 2004, this Repeat version of Dexter's 'Paradox' stays faithful to one of many EPs in UK artist Mat Royall's regal flush of technical itches to last from 01 to 06, spread across labels like Beat Code, Random House and, in more recent years, Real Deal and Bosh Records. 'Paradox' is subset by the fun-loving 'Ychtm Acid' on the B-side, and while we can't claim to be so clever as to be able to decode this standout track's strange titular acronym, we can vouch for the sickness of its eccentric percussions and atmosphere, a fine case of what we call "mood design".

Review: Not to be confused with the heavy Dutch electro hero of the same name (he of Klakson Records fame), Dexter was the early-to-mid 2000s alias of UK tech-house producer Matt Royall. Sushitech Records recently released a retrospective of his work, Past Moves, and now German label Repeat has decided to reissue 2004's Size Counts EP. A-side 'Break It Down' is deep, druggy, chuggy and pleasingly off-kilter, with delay-laden spoken word snippets and echoing hand percussion hits rising above a driving bassline and hypnotic, locked-in drums. The pace and intensity increases on flipside 'Once Again', a kind of Hipp-E & Halo style West Coast tech-house workout rich in trippy female vocal snippets, ghostly chords and dubby bass.

Review: Repeat continues to do great work in bringing holy grail tech house back in the reach of real music fans with this third instalment in their All & All series with scene stalwart Terry Francis. This no nonsense white label package hides some of the sharpest tools in the tech house shed, not least Metal Dogz' heads down, tracky workout 'This World?' and Francis' own 'Late Night Overdose' mix of the track 'Breakfast @ Tone's' he produced with Evil Eddie Richards back in the day. The quality comes assured here, from the tunes themselves to the weight of the pressing and the sonic presence - essential cuts for anyone serious about tech house.

Review: Tech house might be a much-maligned genre these days but once upon a time it was seriously hot shit. That time happened to be when Terry Francis was at the top of his game back in the mid-90s. The UK pioneering very much helped to shape the early sound of the genre as a producer but also a DJ with his legendary sets at Wiggle and Fabric. This ongoing compilation series is now up to a fourth volume of hits from the main man and the quality remains as high as ever. This part focuses on his work from the mid-90s to the early 00s, and all of it is class as they mix up tech, acid, house and more into pure dance floor fire.

Review: Repeat's 'All & All' series is doing a great job in documenting the immense contribution that UK tech-house pioneer Terry Francis has made to the electronic underground. The genius of Francis's work of the late 90s and 2000s is how it presented a form of purist tech-house that drew as much from classic US deep house as the stargazing futurism of techno. This fifth instalment in the series boasts three decidedly deep excursions. Side A sports 'Loving You', an ultra-dreamy and immersive affair from 2001 that wraps deep house elements around a typically chunky and hypnotic groove. Over on the B-side, the echoing male vocal snippets, sumptuous pads and bubbly electronics of 'Strong Woman' are followed by the slightly more dubby (and even dreamier) brilliance of 1999's 'Love In'.

Review: Tech house is an unfairly maligned genre. While criticisms of the blandness of the sound might hold weight for much of the stuff released today, the same simply can't be said for the work of Terry Francis, who helped pioneer its sound. All & All is a new series, this one documenting Francis' contributions to the underground, with many of the tracks appearing on it made during the period in which he was a resident DJ at London's Fabric. As you can hear, 'tech house' at the origin point, as propagated by Francis, was much dreamier - closer to its cousin, deep house. And on cuts like 'How Can Something', you can really hear where the received 'dreaminess' of house and the uptempo, industrial pulse of techno, converged.

Review: Nathan Coles and Nils Hess dropped a couple of LPs and a tidy run of 12"s as Get Fucked in the late 90s and early 00s, and now Repeat are taking us back to one of their finest moments. Their debut LP Dot To Dot is a quintessential demonstration of tech house at the turn of the millennium, shot through with a wonky humour which pointed to the impending minimal boom, but still rough and ready like the UK sound which had proliferated around parties like Wiggle. There's also a dash of the Viennese jazz twist you'd associate with labels like Cheap, and more heads down grooves than you can shake a nose bag at.

Review: The late, great Nathan Coles is rightly hailed as UK tech house royalty - an originator in the scene who embodied its headsy, underground energy in the long and winding years before the sound broke through to its ubiquitous popularity it enjoys now. Of the many projects he turned his talent to, Get Fucked found him studio sparring with Nils Hess around the turn of the millennium on labels like Eukahouse. Now leading tech house reissue label Repeat have gathered together the best of the singles, and as you might well expect it's heavyweight, rolling gear for the late night marathon crew, crafted masterfully with grit and groove in equal measure.

Review: The 90s East Coast house scene owes a real debt to John Howard. He was a pioneer of the era who led the way with his mix of groove, soul, jazzy rhythms and fresh breaks. His best work has become the subject of a new series of reissues from Repeat who kicked off with his Scianloic 12" and now drop this hand-stamped double 12". Shessions is packed to the brim with innovative early house grooves that are up there with your favourite artists from Chicago and Detroit - or at least should be. Our pick is the shimmering late night glow of deep house delight 'Can't Need Sunlight'.

Review: Jay Tripwire's My Life With The Machines compilation series is doing a terrific job of showcasing some of the umpteen early noughties gems buried in his catalogue and archive of unreleased jams. This is volume four (the first three instalments dropped in 2022) and features seven more slabs of intergalactic, wide-eyed, dub-fired tech-house treats. He begins with a sumptuously spacey and loved-up rework of Mothersole & Haris's 'Dumbek', before adding echoing sax sounds and dubbed-out organ lines to a heady early morning groove on 'What Kind of Voodoo Do You Do?', an alternate take on one of his most admired tribal-tinged tracks from 2002. Other highlights include the ultra-deep after-party excellence of 'Smoothin' It Out', the heads-down excellence of 'Smooth Swimmers (Swag Unreleased)' and the warming shuffle of 'Geometry'.

Review: A genuine UK acid house, techno and tech-house pioneer, 'Evil' Eddie Richards boasts a catalogue rich in rare, hard-to-find and overlooked gems. The ever on-point Repeat Records, who previously offered collections of rarities by Terry Farley, Jay Tripwire and others, have spotted this - hence this first instalment of what they promise will be a series of Richards retrospectives. There's much to enjoy within the eight tracks stretched across two slabs of wax, from the rolling, deep house influenced early tech-house excellence of 'Joetwo' and the bouncy brilliance of 'Open The Red Door', to the spacey smoothness of 'Old Klang Road', the immersive early morning hypnotism of 'Heat' and the head-nodding downtempo excellence of closing cut 'Madness'.

Review: Repeat Records are currently embarking on a multi-part series of longtime DJ Eddie Richards' earliest tracks, and this second journey - that's right - follows up the first waxen time capsule to appear so far. Richards' behind-the-booth adventurousness is often credited as one of the instrumental factors in the spread of house music in the UK, and doesn't 'Time Travel' show it. Lesser known as a producer but still much respected in said niche, several choice slab-grooves from Richards' early noughts numbers are selected here: track two from 2002's 'The Dark' EP, 'Underskopje' from that same year's Kubrickian tech house hurler 'Open The Pod Door' EP, and a legitly deep cut from the AA2 side of Richards' Othersound debut 'Dope'. One for early tech house heads, when the genre was still innocent and real experts reigned supreme.