George Fitzgerald At Juno Download

Review: While it's recently become fashionable for bass music producers to jump ship and start making house, you could never accuse George Fitzgerald of being that cynical. Throughout his career, he's always infused his house productions with more than a healthy dollop of bass flavour, be it the rumble of garage or the crackly atmospherics of dubstep. This four-track EP continues that theme, featuring tracks that fuse pitched-down juke and tropical rhythms with the glistening gorgeousness of British deep house (see "Lights Out" and "Hindsight"). The two strongest cuts, "Unilateral" and "Child", are pretty much straight-up garage. Inspired by classic US productions from the tail end of the '90s, they're among the most obviously anthemic things Fitzgerald has produced to date.

Review: George Fitzgerald's all conquering "Child" gets the remix treatment on this essential single from the Aus stable. Obviously impressing Will Saul with this year's similarly thumping "Bang't", he has enlisted the services of Geeeman aka Gerd to rework the track. Taking only the vocal, he works his revivalist Chicago jack magic, with bone dry 909 rhythms, a rock solid bassline and expectedly tongue in cheek feel brought by some Green Velvet inspired synth freakery. Meanwhile, the NY Stomp remix walks the same path as the similar NY/Jersey house revivals of late, giving Bicep a run for their money in terms of muscular rhythmic flex and hands in the air chords.

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: The techy and bass-ready label Hypercolour has always had some pretty leftfield tendencies, ranging from its releases with Groove Armada and Neil Landstrumm, to cheeky Aprils fools day pranks all part of the package. However George Fitzgerald's Needs You EP typifies the Hypercolour sound minus any tomfoolery. "Needs You" in particular plays "oh baby" vocals, sucking percussion and melodic keys against vast-monoliths of low end sonics. On the flip is "Every Inch" again by Fitzgerald. Fluted synth spooks and successive clap-tambourine combos swing to a groove that has a moderately lighter mood. Deetron writes a love note to rave and garage in his remix to "Every Inch" by the way of squelchy electronics and nerdy percussion.

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".

Review: It's been some two years since Shackled, George Fitzgerald's last outing on Hotflush and it's fair to say the landscape both occupy has shifted some in that period. Both artist and label are fully entrenched in the current UK house explosion and Fitzgerald's return to Paul Rose's label with Thinking Of You seems primed to reverberate across festivals, Croatian beaches and warehouse spaces as the summer months roll on. A prominent track in Fitzgerald's recent Essential Mix, "Thinking Of You" sees the producer continue to refine an approach to forthright house music shown on recent dalliances with Aus Music and Hypercolour and feels almost proto fidget in execution. The techier accompaniment "Nighttide Lover" is drawn from a similar fist pumping palette and features rolling vocal manipulation reminiscent of Switch in his heyday.