SUDD WAX Vinyl & CDs

Review: Eclectic technoizer Basic Bastard locks arms with Detroiter Orlando Voorn, their dual sonic output being the new 'Drama' EP. The three-tracker is nothing short of a sonic adventure, spanning acid, to dub, to uncategorisable entrainments. Bastard's original 'Drama' nails the art of the acid loop, a tricky tactic that is much less masterable than one might think. Voorn remixes the track my miring its elements in a cruddy ambience, while also greedily occupying the entire B-side with the urban-hellish jazz-noise-house cut 'Survival'.

Review: From early drops on Tresor to a productive run on D, Detroit Dancer, Chapter 2 and other labels, Santonio Echols has already lived a long and illustrious career in house music. The latest notch on his catalogue comes via Sudd Wax, and finds the US producer in killer shape. "Blue Skies" is a lean, direct cut with the right balance between heavy rhythm section and smooth chords. "Share Me Baby" features some vocal turns from Mike Anderson getting all romantic over another tough beat and mellow keys, while "Overflow" takes things deeper with some progressive melodic refrains that gently shift throughout the course of the track.

Review: Techno artist Alton Miller stayed at South African Studio to make of his latest EP 'Last Africa Jams', a swirling technotic dream of crisp, ambient techno with a tribal tinge. Described as a "reconnection to his own essence" by the SUDD label, Miller intends a return to diasporic source through distributary flows of pluming pad and faint hand drumming, best studied on the opening version of the track 'Idiofrequencies'. The counterfactual 'Indigo Version' amplifies this formula whilst also exciting it, as a propelled drum pattern climbs to taller temporal and dynamic heights, letting healing waves of aura-pad thrum underneath.

Review: Sudd Records has been going for some time as a digital-only label, but now they make the leap to vinyl with the help of Detroit champ Gari Romalis. "Abstraxx (Linear Mix)" kicks off the record in a heady fog of undulating pads, the smoke positively drifting out of the speaker cones over a simple, deep-as-you-like drum pattern. "Dark Ryda (Sunset Mix)" gets a little more funk in its rhythm, but the same mellow mood prevails, almost reaching dub techno levels in its atmospheric chord swells. "Heat (Bout That Life Mix)" takes things out of the darkness and into a lighter frame of mind, but Romalis is still firmly in the deep end of the deep house pool with this final cut on the record.

Review: Detroit maestro Gari Romalis is back on Sudd Wax after launching the label back in 2017, and he's got plenty of coal in the furnace as he cooks up a moody dub style on the killer "Windy Mix" of "Detroit Metro Terminal". The actual "dub mix" of the track takes things even further down into the depths of the subconscious, with a gorgeous chord drop underpinning the whole thing. "Land Of Oblivian" marks out its own space in the echo chamber, albeit with brighter drums on display, while the D1 mix of "I Stabb" makes the chords take on an extra resonant tone as they ping about in the sound bath.

Review: Brazilian electro provocateurs STK have been carving out a distinctive niche with their stripped back machine funk on their own Sudd label, dropping two quality EPs last year. They're at it once again with this fresh crop of workouts from the Drexciyan school of electronics, offering three original tracks which aren't afraid to head into more experimental pastures. Meanwhile Unique Reason steps up for a remix of 'Stoned' which holds true to the title's vibe while offering a different slant on the STK sound.

Review: Also known as Stekke or STK Ensemble, the duo of STK had previously impressed with releases on Mentha and Olga LTD, and now they come to Sudd Wax with some of their most intriguing techno abstractions to date. "Senseless" has a steady groove at its heart, but the way this duo steer their machines has a free and expressive style that suggests heady improv sessions on outboard gear were behind this distinctive techno twist. If that sounds exciting already, hold tight for the daring, skittering patterns of "Jazzoriented", which shows how far drum machines can move from standardized beats when they're in the right hands. DJ SCSI takes the twitchy minimalisms of the original and injects it with a ghettotech energy that strangely suits the source material, completing a distinctive and daring 12".

Review: The Sudd Wax label got off to a strong start with Gari Romalis, building on the foundations of the parent digital label to now bringing respected artists to vinyl. This three-track set from Norm Talley plumbs all kinds of depths, from the metallic mystique of "Magic Wand" to the dusty string swoon of "Black Tea", and the hushed and haunting whispers of pads setting out a gloaming mood on "Feel It". This is subliminal deep house at its finest, marked out with character and warmth, and never just playing it safe for the sake of it. Top marks for Talley!

Review: Rick Wade is one of the most dependable forces in the deep house diaspora, continuing to plough his furrow of heads down, smoky groovers as the trends, scenes and hypes ebb and flow around him. This turn on Sudd Wax (which has previously released the likes of Norm Talley and Gari Romalis) finds Wade in pristine form, not least on lead track "Mannish". "DTroit" has a killer swing and woozy feel to the melodies that could send dancers into an unexpected, gentle kind of rapture, and "Bottomless Anger" occupies the B side with a rich spread of keys twirling up in the ultra-classy deep house that Wade has made his own all these years.