George Fitzgerald At Juno Download

Review: George FitzGerald first came onto our radar last year with superb "The Let Down/Weakness". Here he makes a welcomed return to the airwaves and a bright start to 2011 with his next release on Scuba's ever-exciting Hotflush imprint, backed with an edit from the man himself on the flip. Two-step meets future garage in the title track with a repeated Ramadanman style vocal punctuating the beats and rolling, undulating b-line below. Enticing and insatiably good, this certainly whets the appetite for more to come from the hotly tipped producer this year. Over on the flip Scuba dons his SCB alias for a pared down version of the original, which will leave Berghain veterans drooling. Big.

Review: A fine start for the fledgling Man Make Music imprint, with George FitzGerald TCB on the label's first ever release. The young producer's style is a pleasing one, taking a linear and progressive approach to building his tracks with only subtle yet vital deviations such as gentle build ups and quietly euphoric break downs. "Fernweh" lulls to life in a comfortably opiated state of joy, the beats kick along steadily, somewhere in the middle ground between 4/4 and a step, while "Hearts" is characterised by a similar melodic shuffle with cooing chords and soulful vocal snippets. Highly recommended.

Review: 2011 has really seen young producer George FitzGerald come into his own, with exceptional releases on Hotflush, Aus, and his own ManMakeMusic imprint all helping him to develop his silky brand of garage-leaning bass music into a trademark sound. His final release of the year sees him return to the Hotflush stable for Shackled, the title track of which will already be familiar to those who have heard Scuba's DJ-Kicks mix. It revolves around a lush ever-intensifying chord sequence and twitchy acidic synth line and is perhaps his most effective dancefloor weapon yet. However, it's the following two tracks which provide the real delights; "Feel Like" is a foray into a housier terrain, with an organ melody that evokes some of Marc Kinchen's NY garage productions of the 90s, while "Friends In High Places" sees FitzGerald traverse moodier waters with a slow burning affair, bringing its loose beat in slowly over a wash of pulsating synths.

Review: Aus add the supreme talents of Londoner George FitzGerald to their already impressive roster of artists, and the Silhouette EP betrays further evidence of the young producer's gift for modern house centric sounds. Anyone who checked Fitzgerald's two impressive drops for Hotflush will be all over this release as the title track fully demonstrates his talent for merging elements of hypnotic house and swinging 2-step and flushing them with his trademark pitched vocals. Given the warm reception afforded to John Roberts album last year, the Dial man was a smart choice for remix duties but you couldn't imagine the results if you tried. Stripping the track of its warm melodic excesses Roberts transforms it into a stuttering, fractured mass of heaving industrial psychedelia which is without comparison. Finally, FitzGerald swerves proceedings back towards a sense of danceability with the epic, sweeping Detroit meets Hackney Wick rhythms of "Reset".