West Coast producer, MC and DJ Jesse Bru, draws full-bodied, impressionistic lines where less finessed artists draw blanks. Taking his creative cues from early-90’s sample-based hip hop, Bru’s deep house treatment remains decidedly modern – and mighty soulful. He also moonlights as one half of Vancouver duo Hot Keys (alongside Ryan Trann). His sample-strong debut album, MidCity (2012) on UK label Audio Parallax finds his sharp, fluttering grooves laced with hints of cut-up jazz, dubby acoustics and celestial vocals.
Review: Slothboogie's latest series, 'Remixing With Friends', was founded on the simplest of ideas, namely to get artists they admire to rework tracks from the label's growing catalogue. The series' debut offering is suitably strong from start to finish. Scottish slow-house veteran The Revenge delivers a pleasingly crunchy spacey and hypnotic rework of DJ Akmael's 'Strobe', before Joe Cleen re-imagines Subjoi's 'What You Do' as a deep and sensuous two-step garage workout with added sexy organ stabs and solos. International Dateline then delivers a tweak of Jesse Bru's 'Yellow Sunshine Machine' that sits somewhere between Metro Area and sparse analogue house, while Jason Hodges turns I Germin's 'Green Light' into a woozy-but-bumpin' disco-house loop jam. Best of all though is Chrissy's energetic, TB-303-propelled, breakbeat-sporting re-wire of Jesse Bru and Max Ullis's 'Big Chirp'.
Review: Jesse Bru's brand of deep, warming, timeless-sounding house is very much in keeping with the trademark sound of his home city of Vancouver. While this EP from the much-loved producer has been released by Berlin-based Aterral, it could easily have appeared on one of the Canadian city's hyped imprints. Bru hits the ground running with 'Crystal Clear', a slowly building, dusty deep house gem that adds hazy field recordings, spoken word snippets, tactile bass and starry keys to a driving groove, before opting for squelchy bass, bustling beats and dreamy chords on the excellent 'Vibrations'. Title track 'Rainforest' is a subtly jazzy, Nu Groove-esque chunk of peak-time deep house colour, while 'Breath In' is an ultra-positive sounding number full of kaleidoscopic electronics, nu-disco bass and crispy house drums.
Review: After some great releases on Happiness Therapy, Pulse Msc and Inhale Exhale, Vancouverite Jesse Bru returns on SlothBoogie Record. Joining forces with Max Ulis (Sabota) for this collaborative EP titled Similar Nature, you will first find the hypnotic dub house stomper 'Banh Mi' followed by the rolling main room tech house of 'Moisture Cult' which is equally as icy and glacial. The pair starts to mix it up after with the inclusion of the emotive electro number 'TBH' and ending with the swingy minimal house of 'Big Chirp' in the vein of the classic Cabinet Records style.
Review: To mark the third birthday of his poular Happiness Therapy label, big cheese Simon Blondeau AKA Crowd Control has put together this collection of exclusive, previously unreleased tracks (many first-time collaborations) featuring a mixture of imprint regulars and guest contributors. There's plenty to set the pulse racing throughout, from the intergalactic deep house bounce of DJOKO's 'Feel The Music', the sun-kissed, melody-rich dancefloor beauty of B From E's 'Pagan Mysteries' and the revivalist, turn-of-the-'90s New Jersey deep house warmth of Ricky Razu's 'In Dreams', to the spacey nu-disco/deep house fusion of Crowd Control and Minorah's 'The Loft', and the dubbed-out, slap-bass-sporting early morning deep house warmth of Dub Striker and Tour-Maubourg's 'Classico'.
Review: Last year, London DJ crew and party promotion outfit SlothBoogie delivered one of the compilations of the year, a wonderfully eclectic and on-point set entitled Dancing With Friends. According to the crew, they spent even more time carefully curating this welcome sequel. You can tell, too. Kicking off with the tactile, slow-burn deep house yearning of Soul Won's '96 to Albert Park', the 21-track collection ambles, strides and jogs between soul-flecked deep house (see Kemback's brilliant 'I Know What You're Thinking'), driving nu-disco (Jesse Bru), swirling deep jackers (Erik Ellmann's 'Private Talk'), loopy disc-house haziness (the always excellent Felipe Gordon), jazz-flecked acid squelch-alongs (Pablot), deep space sample house (Sam Irl) and high-octane, peak-time insanity (The Revenge). Simply brilliant.
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