Review: Dwelling deep in Switzerland's eastside, Smalltown Collective have been turning it out for some 15 years now, with a big chunk of their music owing to Plastic City label - as we have again here. This 10 track LP comes fitted with five bonus remixes, allowing the likes of techy minimal heads Livio & Roby to take on "Feel Like That" - tip! But when it comes the Smalltown, it's numbers like "Schaumbad" that really hit that classic sweet spot alongside "Into The Potwhale" with its minimal refrain. Deeper still, with its undeniable bassline, is "Chilly Answer" and the floor-filling "Train Riders". All aboard to Smalltown!
Review: Forteba's last solo single, July 2021's Harmonia on Batvia, cannily combined tough tech-house drums and weighty, moody bass with ultra-dreamy chords and other musical elements borrowed from deep house. The Hungarian producer edges closer to classically warming, dubby deep house while retaining his trademark tech-house drums on 'I Need My Scooter Back', the opening track from his first EP on Plastic City. He opens the curtains, admires the sun and then casually strides towards the beach on Balearic-tinged mid-tempo deep house delight 'Funky Business', before wrapping a sparse, dubby micro-house groove in enveloping chords and slow-burn melodies on EP highlight 'Tabella'.
Review: Next up on Plastic City is newcomer Youen from Bern, Switzerland. He's no stranger to the Mannheim-based label though, having had several releases thus far including last year's great long player Sugar Space. Here we have the intense minimal/tech house journey of "Svalbard" that is guided by its strong dub techno influence throughout. The emotional weight of those dub chords are even more prevalent on the moody next offering "SvalRak", a cavernous and glacial excursion into the deep.
Review: Late last year, Tom Bucher returned to Plastic City for the first time in nearly eight years. Following the release of a trio of quietly confident singles, the German producer is now ready to deliver his debut album, Restart. Beginning with the gorgeously intergalactic, mid-tempo deep house twinkle of 'Lost in Space, Bucher offers up a mixture of attractive and melodious deep house workouts ('Samantha', 'Lipstick', the All Day I Dream style 'Drumdrop'), colourful and emotive fusions of tech-house and bubbly nu-disco ('Restart'), warehouse-ready rollers ('Jupiter'), nods to Orbital's mid 1990s work ('Hymless') and stunning, string-laden peak-time treats ('Stellar').
Review: While he may not have received all that much press attention over the years, Jean Frank Chochois has released a wealth of fine material over the years, most of which can be placed at the classier end of deep house. His albums - and there are quite a few of them - tend to be a bit more eclectic but still rooted in deep house, and that's the case with his latest high-quality effort, Kingdom Come. Over the course of 12 tasty tracks, he sashays between locked-in late-night hypnotism (the odd but excellent, dubbed-out quirkiness of 'Love and Forgive'), drowsy deepness ('Struggle With An Early Love'), rave-inspired retro-futurism (the swinging, organ-sporting eccentricity of 'GOD Is Justice'), ecclesiastical ambient ('In Christ Alone'), ultra-deep post two-step ('Kingdom Come') and much more besides.
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