Review: On part two of the label's 13th anniversary compilation series, Local Talk bosses Tooli and Mad Mats serve up nine more previously unheard cuts from imprint artists and invited guests. As you'd expect given Local Talk's impressive track record, there's not a duffer in sight. After opening with a gorgeously warm, breezy and summery chunk of jazz-flecked electronic house by Wipe The Needle ('Light Years Away'), we're treated to an inspired mixture of sweaty, upbeat Latin jazz/house fusion (James L'Estrange Orchestra), speaker-bothering low-end wobblers (Damon Frost's accurately titled analogue jam, 'Dutty House'), piano-laden classic house excellence (Glenn Davis), dancefloor dub (Riddim Research Lab), Italian dream house revivalism (Aurelius), and much more besides.
Review: Regular collaborators Coflo asnd Lee Wilson are no strangers to Tooli and Mad Mats' Local Talk label; in fact, this two-tracker marks their third appearance on the esteemed Swedish house label. They begin with the deliciously warm and confidently soulful 'Quiet', where Wilson delivers an impeccably emotional lead vocal atop a bouncy Afro-house beat, jaunty bass, lively organ stabs and bubbly electronic motifs. Add in some bonus percussion and drum machine hits and you have a sublime slab of 21st century dancefloor soulfulness. On 'Wait', the pair opts for an even deeper and dreamier sound, with Wilson's distant-sounding vocals weaving in and out of undulating electronic melodies, ocean-deep pads and some sublime melodic flourishes.
Review: While Local Talk has always tended towards the deeper and more soulful end of the house spectrum, there's no denying the jazz chops of label co-founder Mad Mats and the imprint's penchant for jazzier house workouts. It makes perfect sense, then, that the Swedish DJ/producer would want to showcase that side of Local Talk's output with this tidy trawl through the back catalogue. It naturally contains a wealth of jazz-flecked, floor-friendly gems, with the many highlights including Vick Lavender's near 20-minute, Latin jazz-influenced 'Time Traveller Mix' of his own 'Shifting Gears', a deliciously warm, woozy and sub-heavy tweak of Coflo's 'Lux' courtesy of Kaidi Tatham, Kai Alce's 'St Germain does Detroit deep house' re-vision ofMunk's 'Hot Medusa' and Ron Trent's luscious take on 'Rising' by Kyoto Jazz Sextet.
Review: Local Talk's packed release schedule means that keeping up with the label's releases can be tough. Happily, founders Mad Mats and Tooli found a solution long ago: the best-of style Talking House compilation series, which here notches up its 11th instalment. Packed to the rafters with high-quality deep, dusty, jazzy and soul-fired house, the collection's highlights are plentiful. Our picks include the hazy gospel-house hustle of Soulphiction's 'Niederbeat Gospel Dub', the jazzy Afro-house warmth of 'One Less (Main Send)' by Urban Sound Lab presents Miss Yankey, the extra-percussive, organic deep house positivity of Vick Lavender's spacey 'Shifting Gears', the bruk-up breeze that is Anthony Nicholson and Mark De Clive-Lowe's 'Another Story', and the sunset-ready, bossa-house breeze of Shaka's'New Relationship'.
Review: Over the years, Local Talk bosses Mad Mats and Tooli have proved to be shrewd operators when it comes to commissioning remixes. As a result, the label's vaults are full of killer re-rubs, as this fourth collection of reworked highlights proves. Beginning with an inspired Ron Trent jazz-dance revision of Kyoto Jazz Sextet's 'Rising', the set smoothly moves between life-affirming, musically rich Latin house (Anthony Nicholson reworking DASCO), jazz-funk flavoured 4/4 smoothness (Kaidi Tatham tweaking Coflo), soul-fired organic house jazziness (Waajeed remixing Crackazat), analogue-rich late might hypnotism (a show-stopping Jamie 3:26 re-wire of Soulphiction) and sunset-ready tropical house (TRinidadiandeep's inspired re-frame of DASCO's 'African Power').
Review: Given his roots in San Francisco's Bay Area, it's perhaps unsurprising that COFLO makes warm, gently breezy and sun-kissed music that joins the dots between the hippyish, dub-flecked deep house of Dubtribe Soundsystem and jazz-funk fired broken beat. His latest single, "Lux", is a particularly good example of his tactile and wavy fusion of styles, particularly in the EP-opening "Extended Mix" form (which also includes some tidy Latin percussion). The Latin, deep house and jazz-funk influences also come to the fore on "Coflo's Mix", while the rock solid vocal and dub revisions by Kaidi Tatham are more house-flavoured than you may expect, even if they do boast the kind of colourful jazz-funk synthesizer flourishes we've come to expect from the 2000 Black artist.
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