Unknown To The Unknown At Juno Download

Review: The Unknown To The Unknown juggernaut shows no signs of slowing down as they absorb UK garage heroes Mista Men into the fray, delivering three club-ready bombs from the duo. "Labrini" takes it back to '97 with its steel pan percussion and bright streaks of neon intersecting its passages of sticky bassline action. "Forget U" opts for the darker approach, offering only snatches of vocals from its foggy bass, while "Hard Drive" takes some bracing synth stabs and puts them together with some breathy vocals and junglist airhorns to create a devastating combination. Right now only Disclosure can match this pair for such impeccably produced garage inspired beats - big tip!

Review: Stepping up to the raucous surroundings of Unknown To The Unknown, Palace comes bringing the right kind of bass-laden swagger you expect from this ever-strengthening imprint. "Trust" is a monster, led by a coarse garage drum jive and a b-line cheeky enough to get every wallflower within fifty metres shucking. There's no doubting the instantaneous results this banger will bring, and the remixes are no shirkers either. Matrixxman cools the heat slightly with a mildly stripped variation on the original's driving theme, while the Mista Men opt instead to bring a seriously funky house shuffle to bear on the bin-bothering party antics.

Review: Given Unknown To The Unknown's wide ranging remit, including bassline garage, Detroit electro and Chicago house, it was perhaps inevitable that a genuine 90s house record would find its way onto the label at some point. Originally released in 1992, OHM's "Tribal Tone" was supposedly the first tune to use the Korg M1 sound that was later immortalised by Robin S' "Show Me Love", and had considerable impact at the time, being championed The Shamen frontman Mr C, being licensed to R&S sub-label Global Cuts and US label Vibe, and finding itself remixed by the Sabres of Paradise trio. Here it finds itself with three similarly great remixes, a stripped-back, raw groover from Marquis Hawkes, a horn-heavy piece of 90s action from Capracara and a thundering mid-tempo effort from Northern Souls. Essential!

Review: UTTU return with what is probably their most impressive release yet; The Sadist, a collaboration by the legendary DJ Stingray, and Unknown To The Unknown's DJ Haus. It certainly lives up to its namesake, with "The Sadist (Part One) employing a 160BPM tempo and a searing electro bassline, and furious drum programming that brings the influence of Chicago juke to Stingray's Detroit leaning template. Part two of "The Sadist" meanwhile concentrates more on rapid 808 drum programming and more fluid synths, dragging the listener remorselessly through a world of alien sounds and breakbeat bass. The remixes meanwhile are something very special indeed, with Drexciya's Heinrich Mueller reworking "The Sadist" with a slower tempo, brittle, frosty synth shards and weird transmissions from the other side, and Cestrian (aka Ali Renault) provides similarly great remix of "The Sadist Pt 2", employing all manner of analogue arpeggios in a fine approximation of Detroit's finest.

Review: In just over a year, Unknown to the Unknown have gone from humble beginnings to releasing material from Detroit legend DJ Stingray, Chicago heat from Marcus Mixx and Alias G, the rudest bassline garage from DJ Q and tracks from up and comers Slackk, Nightwave and Mista Men. But the genesis of the label can be traced back to a YouTube channel known as "DaAutopsy", where Hot City's DJ Haus still posts forthcoming UTTU hype and old vinyl rips to this day. Now the channel has taken on a life of its own, and spewed forth "Tear Tha Fuckin' Club Up!". Undoubtedly the hardest hitting UTTU joint to date, incandescent rave stabs go toe to toe with Baltimore club styles, creating a beast of a club track that resembles a Frankenstein's monster of the YouTube generation. Big tip!

Review: Danny Wolfers is stuck in a groove right now, a hugely prolific production groove which has him tossing out new material on a seemingly weekly basis for all manner of labels. Hot on the heels of that Nacho Patrol 12" for Simonetti and a under the cover album for Blue Moon Safari comes this this three track debut for the equally relentless Unknown To The Unknown label. The Star Gazing EP makes for a wondrous display of Legowelt's talent for implementing those trademark melodies within various rhythmic frameworks; in the case of stand out track "Visions In My Mind", it's a hypnotic disco jacker lent no small degree of melancholy by the titular vocal.

Review: UTTU have a cast-iron reputation for releasing cutting edge work by a wide variety of acts as disparate as Legowelt, Sinden and Capracara. Here we get a selection of their more bass/urban-oriented talent. Classified delivers vintage cut-up UKG on "Say To You". The latter is given a wobble heavy remix by DJ Q, who also provides the warm, Ayia Napa sounds of "All You Have To" and "You're Not Around". Zibba contributes the squelchy, string laden "Say To You (2006)" and Mooney goes all loopy funk on "Hey Hey".

Review: Bringing more of the rough and tumble jack-action to Unknown To The Unknown, Capracara is as up for the party as ever on "Ronin", although arguably reining in his more wayward tendencies for a more direct garage house jam. Still, when the drums hit as hard as they do here, a little linear structure doesn't dampen the spirits. Recent Juno Plus podcasters Kodiak step up for a remix, and they proceed to delineate everything in sight with a chunky broken beat and dense layers of head-spinning melody, vocal samples and effects. It's perhaps less party ready than the original, but addictive all the same. Killer!

Review: The seemingly unstoppable musical juggernaut that is Unknown to The Unknown marches on with this incendiary single from label boss DJ Haus. "Needin U'" is fresh as they come, a love letter to classic house and UK hardcore and a UFK anthem all at the same time. Mostly, however, it's just straight-up fun rave tackle, with the remix from shape-shifting producer Capracara every bit as good, replacing the original's stepping rhythms with a robust, refreshingly smacky 4/4 pulse. Highly recommended.

Review: Continuing to bait overly serious dance music with unashamed rave fodder, Unknown To The Unknown enlist a couple of rough and ready remixers in to take DJ Haus' "Needin U" into further realms of large. R1 Ryders step up first with more breaks than a Channel 5 film, wasting no time in launching into a dark slice of rolling old-skool goodness drenched in mammoth synths. Photonz's remix may seem restrained in comparison, kicking off on a haunting refrain and submerged beats, all the while edging towards a proper drop that calls to mind the finest space age machinations of Yorkshire bleep.

Review: After sturdy appearances on Numbers and Local Action, Slackk returns to one of his earlier outposts in the form of Unknown To The Unknown, throwing down a curious mixture of oriental folk music with grime-inspired beats and the occasional flurry of vintage computer game MIDI business. The beats are slippery and jerky on "Inland" where the synth comes in all side-chained and disjointed, with only gun shots for ballast on the buoyant groove. "Wolf Creek" brings on the aforementioned Monkey Island vibes, using curious keys and harmonies to create a decidedly eerie atmosphere, while "Blue Forest" is arguably the spiciest tune on the EP with its urgent percussion and more involved arrangements of lute action worked into a stomping 140 bpm rhythm.

Review: All that time conversing with the likes of Marcus Mixx and DJ Stingray must have rubbed off on Unknown To The Unknown's DJ Haus. Despite his Hot City project (alongside Ben Keen) being known for its bass-heavy 2-step productions, this EP, in collaboration with the LA/Montreal pair LOL Boys, consists of a pair of tweaking acid-house jackers. The title track opens with a flurry of swung 808 kicks and neon stabs, before giving way to a rough and ready 303 line, with the rhythm straightened out in the second half into a tough 4/4 house rhythm. "Whitney (Jus Some Shit)" is another winning piece of Chicago inspired house, with a gnarled bassline, driven by furious cowbells and detuned ghetto vocal samples, all with a grimy undercurrent that keeps its feet firmly entrenched in the underground of contemporary London club music. If you're worried that the new direction will cause some of Hot Ciy and LOL Boys energy to be lost in translation, don't be - this is some their best output to date.

Review: Lisbon producer Lake Haze pops his UTTU cherry here with two classy forays into the world of his beloved UK garage. The boy's done good with these new additions to the label's revered catalogue - "Late Night Trip" is a stomping 4 x 4 wobble belter wrapped in typically trippy, bleepy melodies. However, with its laser blasts, epic synthlines and heavy tropical rhythms, "Need For Speed" ain't just Tom Cruise's favourite, it's ours too!

Review: DJ Stingray's second appearance on Unknown To The Unknown is finally made available digitally. "Cryptic" is a bad-ass Stingray cut, where his uncompromising synth arpeggios flutter away into space, taking us on a wild frenzy through inter-galactic territories. "Know Your Enemy" is a heavy, breakbeat-ridden mutant - containing some of the nastiest, most filthy vocal samples you'll hear this millenium, whilst "Solitude" picks up from where the man left off since his last LP and delivers a fine package of funky electro basslines and gnarly, contorted drum patterns. TIP!

Review: With over 20 releases in less than two years UTTU have managed to uphold their credibility, so often lost with labels who spit out song after song like copy machines (to quote Lil' Louis' French Kiss), and this release from Portugeuse pairing Photonz is another killer. Balearic, beatdown and busy electro with hints of a 80s Hollywood action soundtrack make up the ten-minute title "Hurt Me Hurt Me". Piqued melodies and synthesised pan pips are treated to 707 workouts in "Veracruz", remixed by Boy s Noize Records stalwarts Shadow Dancer who up the BPM and exercise their Warp Records influences.

Review: Capracara's "House Of Dolls" was one of Unknown To The Unknown's finest tracks last year, and here it gets a reworking from library music and soundtrack specialist Jonny Trunk. The hookup, we can only assume, came through Burnip's appreciation of slasher movie soundtracks, and the result is as out there as you could imagine - stripping the radiophonic bleeps from the original, Trunk leaves only an echo of the original's melody and adds some acoustic samples to glue the remix together. Propelled by nothing other than a simple kick drum, it's what you might imagine a music concrete version of house music to sound like.

Review: Musical output from Jonathan Burnip has been somewhat sporadic in the five years he has been in operation, but when he does drop a record it always counts for something. On 'House of Dolls', his masterful command of a standout hosue groove comes to the fore, as a perfectly bumping beat offsets a cavernous organ stab. All the while digital squalls flit around the track, but really everything revolves around the funk of the track. TAPES take a cheeky 8 bit dub approach to their remix, which is charming if not as striking as the fantastic original. Another winner for the on point Unknown To The Unknown imprint.

Review: Bay area analogue fetishist Vin Sol pops up on Unknown To The Unknown with a stargazing chunk of retro-futurist party acid. "Edges of a Vortex" packs the ghetto-inspired drum funk of Dance Mania and the low-end bounce of Virgo Four into a bass music-inspired slab of stab-laden euphoria (think snaking synth sax, stomping rhythms and rumbling Chi-town bass). "Voice Chip Activ8", meanwhile, sounds like the bastard offspring of Luke Vibert, Jeff Mills and DJ Rashad. Matrixxman remixes, turning the relentless original into a slack-jawed acid groover.

Review: An intriguing coming together of bass talents on this double-tracker from Unknown To The Unknown, which features Sinden and 5kinandbone getting marvellously murky and dubby on the half-steppin' dread of "Coin Power", while Sinden passes the baton to Canadian outfit Babe Rainbow, who also collaborate with 5kinandbone on the minimal tech-step of the equally sinister "Dis You Knock".

Review: Former L2S player and MJ Cole remixer Duncan Powell rejigs his 2009 banger "Brake" on this new release from Unknown To The Unknown. The original - previously known and loved from Hot City's Fact mix of the same year - is included here thankfully and still shines thanks to its ultra-funky minimal garage motifs and catchy-as-hell chiming melody. The 2012 mix however throws some real fire at the tune - adding thicker kicks and some deeper sub bass whilst still keeping the rude funk locked in.

Review: With a number of big releases under his belt, including an EP for Palms Out Sounds and Untold's SSSSS label no less, Dubbel Dutch finds himself on Unknown to the Unknown's own imprint for his new release. The original version of "B Leave" takes drum & bass inspired percussion and fuses it with a modern bass template, taking its R&B sample and combining it with icy synth stabs which create a sound much like a Detroit take on bass. Transatlantic Night Slugs associates NGUZUNGUZU meanwhile offer a significantly more stripped back version, adding pan pipe samples to its chopped and screwed future R&B aesthetics. Highly recommended.

Review: As one half of the garage-loving Hot City, it makes sense for DJ Haus to be releasing Radio 1 Xtra and veteran garage and bassline producer DJ Q's All Junglist on his label Unknown To The Unknown - in fact it's almost surprising something like this hasn't been released before. Initially characterized by drum programming that is, well, "junglist", the track is interjected with a beat that is less broken, and more split in half, ripped apart with a tidal wave of woozy bassline action; combined with the tropical synth melody and hardcore referencing piano you've got a track that is classicist and very much in keeping with the label's technicolour focus. It's joined by "Will I Ever Be Free", marked out by a slightly housier touch given by its deep string melody, adding a rich contrast to the swooping low end and crunchy snares. It's a curious mix of bassline garage and Detroit moods, and one that works surprisingly well. Highly recommended!

Review: Portuguese duo Photonz' latest track "1551", is described by Unknown To The Unknown as "Anti Illuminati Egyptian Trance House". It's somewhat apt as a description, as the track's tumbling tropical rhythms are joined by the kind of hypnotic melodic arrangement that gets right under your skin alongside some piano chords that make the whole thing sound like Chicago house as invented by Giorgio Moroder. As ever with UTTU, high calibre remixes are on the table also; Capracara turns in a surprisingly UK funky-inspired revision, Walter Ego turns it into a bass-heavy broken garage banger, and HALP smashes it into tiny pieces and rearranges it into a weird hybrid of IDM, footstep and dubstep. Essential!