Vicious Charm Recordings Vinyl & CDs

Review: We're never short of new Ricardo Villalobos material and he's generous with his time as a mixer, but this project offers something different from the Chilean mad scientist of minimal. A Mountain Of One are a duo who deal in Balearic-leaning pop with a subtle charm and an adventurous spirit, and they initially approached Villalobos for a single remix of one of their tracks. As a fan of their sound, Villalobos ran with the project and it wound up as a full remix album of seven different versions. On the earlier tracks Ricardo takes a surprisingly light touch, while the later stages find us knee deep in the mesmerising roll of his minimal house, shot through with dubbed out ingredients from the original songs. It's surprising and satisfying in equal measure, showing Villalobos at his best and quite the scoop for A Mountain Of One.

Review: Vicious Charm Recordings makes its vinyl bow with a collection of cuts from the mighty Crooked Man, AKA sometime Sweet Exorcist and All Seeing I man Richard 'Parrot' Barratt. A-side 'Love & Resistance' is one of Barratt's most magical and otherworldly workouts yet - a long and crooked chunk of off-kilter deep house soul featuring vocals by Carmen Squire that's as emotionally impactful as it as magical and melancholic. Over on the flip, Barratt offers up more mind-mangling mid-tempo sleaze via the echoing vocal samples, clanking industrial machine beats and frankly filthy TB-303 bass of 'Nemesis'. He ruffs that track up further on 'Nemesister', reaching for bouncy, dancehall-influenced house beats, reverb-laden stabbing bass and trippy electronic riffs. Like much of Barratt's work, it's effortlessly excellent.

Review: Love Makes Magic is the latest album from Jim, whose figurative identity may be hard to pin down - who is Jim? goes its tagline. Literally, though, this new one is an alias of Jim Baron, one of the many brains behind modern dance power trio Crazy P. A rather large curveball compared to his out-and-out dance music festival-stunners, this is an album of more dance-inflected folk, drawing on many a folk dance and reel to provide something happily straddling stripped-back modesty and brazen floorbound immodesty. Guitars backed by stompy 4/4 backbeats, basically - of course we love it.

Review: Richard Barratt aka Parrot aka Crooked Man is one of those artists with an indelible sonic fingerprint yet a diverse array of sounds in his arsenal. Here he offers up a pair of different remixes of the same tune, namely Jim v Crooked Man's 'Phoenix' on Vicious Charm Recordings. His Goth Edit is the one for us - a haunting tune with eerie guitar strings slowly unfolding over swirling electronics and smudged vocal sounds. It's perfect for this time of year when Halloween is just around the corner and is another master stroke from the Sheffield wizard.

Review: Now 15 years old, The Juan MacLean's 'Happy House' is undoubtedly a club classic, though only a handful of the numerous remixes original label DFA commissioned ever appeared on vinyl first time round. The epic Matthew Dear vs Audion rework (released digitally in 2009) is one of those - hence this special Record Store Day release. That infamous version - a wonky, lo-fi, hypnotic techno-not-techno remake of a 21st century dub disco-meets-piano-house gem - can be found in full on side B, with a more recent Mark E 'remix of the remix' on the A-side. Warmer and dreamier with opioid chords, twinkling pianos and a tactile, soft-touch vibe, the Brummie producer's tweak gives the legendary remix a much more yearning, loved-up feel. It's a textbook example of how to make an already excellent rework even better than it already is.