Tiger & Woods Germany Vinyl & CDs

Review: The third volume in Tiger & Woods Unleashed Tapes series is a rare solo outing from Larry Tiger (real name Valerio Del Prete) under his occasional Delphi alias. As you'd expect, it boasts the same loop-based, synth-heavy, house-not-house style as the Tiger & Woods material he produces with Marco Passarani, albeit with more of a focus on sounds more often found in Italo-disco and new wave records. Highlights include the spacey robo-disco thrust of 'Vector', the mid-tempo Italo-disco shimmer of 'Silicone Emotion', the hard-wired heaviness of 'Riscio' - all undulating sequenced bass, echoing drum machine hits and mutilated talkbox vocals - and the squelchy, Bobby Orlando-influenced 'Metropole'.

Review: Originally released in highly limited numbers back in 2019, Tiger & Woods' tribute to vintage Italian dance music finally gets a wider release courtesy of Running Back. Unlike much of their material, which plunders classic electrofunk and boogie tracks for inspiration, 'One Last Dance' is a largely sample-free affair inspired by the kinds of sounds you'd have heard while dancing in open-air clubs on the Italian coast in the mid-to-late 1980s. If you're after stripped-back, arpeggio-driven, post Italo-disco thrills, the synth-heavy 'Tirreno Version' is the pick of the pair, while the EP-opening 'Adriatico Mix' has a warmer, more sun-splashed, Italo-goes-Balearic disco flex, with lead lines the glisten as brightly as the Adriatic Sea. Throw in a solid DJ tool (the 'Bonus Beats' version), and you have an essential 12".