Review: The prolific Manuel Costela has worked in a range of house and disco styles over the years, but this three-tracker for Bengoa's Athens-based B2 Recordings finds him firmly in deep house mode. Opener 'Unpleasant Dreams' is a suitably drifty and abstract affair, albeit still underpinned by a hefty 4/4 kick and with sampled, spoken vox to stop it washing over you. It's 'I Feel It Coming' and 'Inner Journey' that work better for yours truly, though: both (the former especially) are just a little more uptempo and driving, and both add garage-y elements that help infuse proceedings with a little more soul and groove.
Review: Boite Music is the baby brother of Fran Deeper's Spa In Disco stable, specialising in "synth, chugging Balearic and power disco". If you've yet to dip into the label's catalogue - or simply just can't get enough of it - then this nine-track compilation is well worth a listen. It begins with a throbbing and pulsating slab of exotic, Italo-tinged nu-disco (Cobertizo's 'Inana') and ends with the mind-mangling dark-Italo chug of Manuel Costela's synth-heavy 'Girls of the Night'; in between, you'll find a variety of trippy, heavily electronic treats including such highlights as the Bobby Orlando-on-sleeping pills shuffle of 'Glide' by Saturno 5, the occidental disco exoticism of Jason Core's 'Istanbul', and the atmospheric, delay-laden vocal nu-disco pulse of Rayko's 'Solstice'.
Review: Three mixes to choose from of this latest bullet from Spanish deep house and disco regular Manuel Costela. In its Original form, 'Esa Sonrisa' is a laidback, lounge-y groover led by a gorgeously warm, resonant bassline that's augmented by lighly fluttering synths and organs. The Or Nu Disco Remix perhaps has more instant floor appeal thanks to some added surging, throbbing oomph in the bottom end, but the standout for yours truly is the Or Soulful Remix, where the beats get just a lil' more intricate and the female vocal snips are brought further to the fore.
Review: For the latest missive on his popular and prolific Spa In Disco label, Fran Deeper has joined forces with sometime label artist and semi-regular Rayko collaborator Manuel Costela. The pair's original mix is thickset and groovy - a warming, bass-heavy, mid-tempo chunk of nu-disco/summery deep house fusion smothered in rolling percussion, stargazing chords, twinkling effects and languid, laidback synthesiser flourishes. Athenian producer and Leng Records regular Lex reaches for Wurlitzer style organ sounds on his chunkier, marginally more up-tempo remix, dragging the track a little closer to peak-time dancefloors in the process, while James Bright's EP-closing version is brighter, breezier and undeniably more electronic -a sparkling nu-disco workout that should put a fair few smiles on faces when dropped at the right time.
Review: Two figureheads of the contemporary disco scene join forces, a move that will already have plenty of disco buyers salivating. What they've come up with between them is a chuggy, midpaced disco groover with breathy, barely-there vox that sit back in the mix and let some very competent six-string histrionics take centre-stage instead. No obvious peaktime scream-along, this: instead it's the kind of track you drop to keep 'em moving in-between one big anthem and the next. But with Rayko and Costela involved, you can at least rest assured the production's gonna be faultless. Classy stuff, Spanish fellas!
Review: Madrid man Manuela Costela has previously been praised for the variety and quality of his house and disco related productions, something that helps explain the inclusion of his tracks on an impressively wide variety of compilations. There's plenty of variety to be found within the three tracks on his latest EP for Rare Wiri too, with a pleasing reliance on weighty, low-slung bass guitar the only unifying feature. He sets the tone on opener "Mustang Lady", a hot-to-trot nu-disco number laden with spacey synth sounds, layered vocal snippets and insanely funky dub disco bass. Synths come to the fore further on the slap-bass propelled, acid-flecked nu-disco number "Circles", while closing cut "Mama Funk" is a jaunty, loop-heavy disco house affair whose most ear-catching feature is the extensive use of spring-fresh flute samples.
Review: Thicker than clotted cream and twice as opulent, Golden Soul's latest label retrospective is well worth your attention. It focuses on material released by the Spanish imprint in 2019, which was arguably the label's strongest year to date. Label founder James Rod makes a number of killer contributions, with the colourful, bass-heavy Balearic nu-disco chug of "Let's Play Together" (a collaboration with Parissior) and the dreamy Italo-disco throb of "Heart Rock (Aleito Mix)" standing out. Elsewhere, get your ears around the sparkling, breakdown-boasting sunrise rush of Dubhouser's "Ereh" and the thrill-a-minute Euro-disco effervescence that is Hoochie Coochie Papa's "Work My Body".
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