This week at Juno

This week Juno Plus kicked off its (un)official Theo Parrish month with the arrival of the first of a slew of 12″s bearing the name of the deep house don.

His collab with broken beat icon IG Culture was one of the obvious highlights of the past seven days, with the one sided “Traffic” 12″ characterised by a cavalcade of stuttering, raw drum programming, frenzied snares, jazzy horns, junkyard percussion and a truly voluminous, stomach churning bassline. It’s a proper house wigout, and one that the Sound Signature boss has been rinsing in his DJ sets for a while now. Meanwhile Theo’s remake of Tullio De Piscopo’s “Stop Bajon” also arrived late in the week via Italian label Archive. Expect more Parrish business to arrive in the coming weeks!

Almost a year to the day after Joy Orbison launched Doldrums with a 12 inch including the impressive “J.Doe” and “BRKLN CLLN” the label returned with two releases in the space of a week. The label boss chipped in with a brace of tracks that were boldly and resolutely house music in style and execution, and whilst the Yoruba style percussion and cavernous Detroit rhythmic thrust of “BB” impressed, it was the emotive energy conjured by the fragile vocal strains of “Ladywell” that left the lasting impression. This was complemented by Braiden’s debut release, with both the original cut of “The Alps” and the accompanying Kassem Mosse remix pleasing everyone at Juno Plus immensely.

On a machine funk tip, Ben Klock, Demdike Stare, Traversable Wormhole and Martyn dropped some serious techno heat, while Carl Craig re-tweaks of Canada’s finest Tiga and UK producers Ramadanman & Appleblim surfaced on Turbo and Aus respectively.

Over at Juno Download, the latest (and best named) single from Matthew Dear’s well-received Black City album hit the digital shelves, with Ed Banger’s Breakbot and the annoyingly talented Nicolas Jaar remixing “You Put A Smell On Me” in fine style.

Meanwhile, for their most anthemic outing yet Drumpoet Community turned to the most unlikely of sources: former Compost Records nu-jazzer Bernd Kunz, better known as A Forest Mighty Black (or AFMB). If you like piano driven house, we suggest you check it out sharpish.

Elsewhere, Strut compiled some highlights from a stellar 2010 into one neat little package, and New Zealand’s Electric Wire Hustle released what we suggest may be their classiest single to date.

The coveted ‘album of the week’ gong goes to dubstep pioneers Horsepower Productions, with Quest For The Sonic Bounty seeing the light of day via Tempa. Not far behind were Messrs Ford and Shaw, who prepared an album’s worth of tasty techno Delicacies, while evergreen Glaswegian imprint Soma released their annual compilation.

As always, happy hunting.