Review: Brighter Days, a fixture in Amsterdam's nightlife since 2014, finds its essence beautifully captured in a curated compilation by resident DJs Kamma and Masalo for Rush Hour. The duo, celebrated for their positive and inclusive semi-regular party, has seamlessly translated the event's vibe into a musical journey. This compilation serves as a testament to their explorations, featuring a blend of slept-on and unreleased gems, including some of their own re-edits, while staying true to the event's sound and ethos. Much like the intimate dancing spaces Brighter Days is known for, the album presents an open-minded, club-friendly soundtrack that effortlessly connects crate-digging obscurities from various eras, fresh cuts, and unreleased tracks from local producers who have become staples on the Brighter Days dancefloors. The result is a cohesive musical experience that mirrors the spirit and diversity of this beloved Amsterdam institution.
Review: Djosa, a member of Dutch band Arp Frique & The Family, steps out in solo mode with two very different tracks. 'Botanica Obscura' itself is almost textbook Italo/space disco, with sci-fi synths underpinned by a Moroder-esque bassline, and will please lovers of the style for sure. But it's the accompanying 'Vampiro' that takes the gold for yours truly, as he teams up with veteran Dutch/Surinamese jazz flautist Ronald Snijders on a classy cut that just oozes lounge-y, tropical 70s disco appeal, and that somehow manages to conjure a hazy, laidback vibe despite being deceptively uptempo in the beats department.
Review: Daniele Labbate AKA Daniel Monaco is an Italian bass player/producer who's now based in Amsterdam, where he leads up the "hybrid acid techno disco" trio Umeme. In solo mode his work has appeared on labels including Bordello A Parigi and Roam Recordings, and now he comes to legendary Dutch imprint Rush Hour with a brace of collaborations with Senegalese percussionist and vocalist Mame N'Diack Seck Thiam. 'Life Lesson', the loungier of the two, features a pleasingly fat funk bassline and is the standout to these ears, but there's much to be said for the nagging synths of 'Medicinen' too.
Review: Gigi Testa, a bona fide Neapolitan hero whose work draws inspiration from local music of the last four decades, heads up the label World Peace Music. His latest outing comes courtesy of Amsterdam-based label Rush Hour titled "Jinja", an Afro house-influenced journey which truly nails that spiritual life music vibe. Continuing on with the soulful and life-affirming energy is the positive energy of "Malinke" up next, followed by the emotive slo-mo deep house of "Echoes In The Sky".
Review: Deco sees Tom Trago return to Rush Hour, the first label to release his music over 15 years ago. This album sound tracks a sea change in the Dutch producer's musical direction. Having retreated from the DJ circuit, Deco is a place where conjures up the beautifully serene ambience of "A Dark Oak" and "Central Park". Musical leanings are also to the fore. On the string soaked "Never Peace A Puzzle", Trago draws on the deeper side of Detroit techno but keeps his distance from the dance floor. Rounding out this introspective musical document, Deco also yields the slow-motion beats of "When the Sky Is Watching Us".
Review: Relmer aka Jelmer Schutte lands on Rush Hour with this fine five-tracker. Inspired by Chicago house and Detroit techno throughout, the most dance floor-focused iteration is "Bummer Paradise", a chord-heavy driving groove. "Naked Chimp" is a more stripped back affair, with this fast-rising producer dropping a drum-heavy workout that's peppered with looped vocal samples. There's also a more considered flavour to Relmer's productions: on the title track the use of crystalline synths and rich strings transport the listener to a place close to the esoteric sounds of Detroit Escalator Company, while "Strange Movement" is a wonderfully balmy deep house groove.
Review: Rush Hour presents a meeting of truly innovative musical minds on its latest outing, with the iconoclastic Detroit producer Terrence Dixon hooking up with Jordan GCZ, one half of Juju & Jordash. Suffice to say, the results are nothing short of stunning. "Fretless" is a triumph of understatement, resounding to ghostly bass murmurs and subtle chords, while "Operation Delete" continues this theme, powered by stepping, offbeat drums. In contrast, "Space Chime" sees the pair focus on the dance floor, with atmospheric flourishes unfolding over a subtle, acid-soaked bass, while "Axis Mundi" sees them venture down a darker path, powered by Dixon's repetitive rhythms and Jordan's wired tones.
Review: Rush Hour bring us an EP from Italian DJ, producer and World Peace Music label boss that, truth be told, would be just as at home sitting in our Balearic section. There's an early/proto-house feel to the bassline on 'Esoteric Paradise' itself, sure, but the YMO-ish synths are pure nu-disco, while both 'Guayaba' and 'Blue Ocean' find us firmly in that part on the musical spectrum marked "dreamy, midtempo and fluttery", before 'Moments In Time' eradicates any lingering doubt with its mellow Spanish guitar line. Moments of dancefloor abandon may be in short supply, but it's pleasant to listen to all the same.
Review: Soichi Terada's surprise recent album on Rush Hour, Asakusa Light, was a joyous blast from the past - a set of luscious, musically rich deep house cuts that recalled the Japanese producer's now sought-after works of the 1990s. The two tracks showcased here started out as album tracks but have been completely re-imagined by Terada in collaboration with regular Jamie 3:26 collaborator - and confirmed Italo-disco enthusiast - Masalo. 'Double Spire (Club Mix)' offers the best of both producers' styles, with shimmering, intergalactic electronics and loved-up synth melodies rising above a vintage house beat and Italo-style synthesizer bassline. On 'Diving Into Minds (Club Mix)', the pair add a bit of extra low-end weight and percussive pressure to proceedings, resulting in an addictive blend of piano house pressure, tribal house grooves and enveloping, sunset-ready electronics.
Review: Three tracks here from Mark Grusane, a native of Chicago whose club roots go all the way back to the 1980s. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that the sounds of early house and techno are the clearest influence to be heard here. 'Dance Intensity' itself, with its intense, incessant synth throb, perhaps owes as much to the Motor City as it does to the Windy one, but 'Klub Nacht' with its spoken vocal could have come straight off 'Jack Trax Vol X' while 'The Next Ride' has a similarly raw feel but drops the tempo by several notches. Solid stuff all round but 'Klub Nacht' takes the gold.
Review: It's nice to see Rush Hour giving some long overdue love to Needs, a Frankfurt-based production outfit and label that was launched in the late 1990s to provide a musical outlet for the dreamy, musically rich deep house productions of the Bartkuhn brothers and their long-term collaborator Jan "Yannick" Elverfeld. This timely retrospective gathers togethers some of the crew and imprint's finest musical moments of the nineties and noughties, with highlights including the jaunty organ motifs, driving beats and warming chords of 'Walkin' Thru Circles (Thump Mix)', the saucer-eyed, uplifting dancefloor colour of 'Park Jam', the sparkling and awe-inspiring 'Brother (Red Mountain Alchemy)' and 'Worlds (Theme)', a 15-minute chunk of intergalactic house brilliance.
Review: Robert Hood launched his Floorplan alias with this 12" back in 1996 on his M-Plant sub-label Drama, which set the template for the funky and disco-fied energy the project would pursue thereafter - with the addition of his daughter Lyric. Amsterdam's Rush Hour presents this digital remaster as part of the much needed 2021 reissue, which features the pumping and totally uplifting main mix, with its addictive and looped-up vocal refrain sure to hypnotise dancers in the club as much as it did back in the mid '90s. The Club 246 Mix is also featured, which goes down a deeper route, quite unlike anything you've ever heard from the Minister Of Techno before. This is the kind of sensual late night mood music you'd expect fellow Detroiter Moodymann to drop in a DJ set.
Review: Those with a deep knowledge of classic Chicagoan deep house may well be aware of Vincent Floyd's Cruising, a sought-after single that first appeared in stores way back in 1990 on one-off Gherkin Records offshoot Resound Records. 31 years on, the EP has lost none of its allure. Opener 'Cruising (Long Ride)' is undeniably special, with Floyd wrapping warming chords, picturesque synthesizer melodies, the sound of crashing waves and sci-fi electronics around a luscious bassline and snappy machine drums. It comes backed by the deeper, dreamier and more melody-driven 'Isolation' and 'Silent Noise', a slightly stranger - but still wonderfully atmospheric - chunk of Windy City deep house.
Review: Following albums in 2020 for Axis and Tresor, Terrence Dixon now drops a long player for Rush Hour. He released the superb Theater of a Confused Mind as Population One back in 2014 on the Dutch label, and Detroit makes for a worthy follow up. Like Theater, it is dense and swampy, less focused on the pointillist sound design that punctuated some of Dixon's work under his own name. "8th Chance" even inhabits the kind of jazzed out style as Rob Hood's Nighttime World, while "Dexter And Joy At Night" sees Dixon take a more atmospheric techno approach. That said, there is no shortage of stripped back, forward looking dance floor grooves with the title track and "Music Box" sounding particularly impressive.
Review: It may have taken eight years, but finally one of Hun Choi's most memorable singles has made it to digital download. Originally released via a limited-edition, double A-side 12", the two-track affair remains one of Hunee's heaviest and most club-ready releases. Check first opener 'Tide', where tough, chopped-up drum machine beats, tribal-tinged percussion and wayward, acid-style motifs provide sturdy support for swirling chords and lo-fi electronic lead lines. The Rush Hour regular continues in a similarly chopped-up, analogue-rich and drum-heavy vein on the slightly funkier but no less raw and weighty 'Minnoch', whose low-slung, lo-fi bassline is particularly addictive.
Review: Recognised as the world beating archivists that Rush Hour are, this compilation presents a series of wayfaring synth tracks released at different times over the last 40 years. With the earliest cut committed to tape in 1978 and the most recent in 2018, Artificial Dancers - Waves Of Synth lifts rare and previously unheard music from the late Stephan Huss of Psyche, to Californian band Batang Frisco, to Matthias Schuster's Im Namen Des Volkes project with a previously unreleased 2014 track called "Alles Ist Gewinn". Alongside the Human League too, you will find a Chris and Cosey number called "Hybrid C" that was plucked from their CD-only album Skimble Skamble. A whole new constellation to explore.
Review: Rush Hour might not be the first label you think of when it comes to contemporary funk, disco and soul, but they've certainly delivered the goods on this latest single from New York's Tom Noble, who heads up Superior Elevation Records. In its original form, 'Flashlight' is an instrumental disco excursion centred around a fat walking bassline that vaguely recalls Candido, sweeping strings and wukka-wukking guitar... all very 1979, but the Masalo Remix propels us forward in time to somewhere around 1983 with its harder, faster beats (complete with a cheeky nod to 'Blue Monday') and throbbing Italo bassline.
Review: Swiss DJ Sassy J now curates the second compilation in the Patchwork series, for Dutch imprint Rush Hour. For the past 14 years, she has run a night of the same name in her hometown Bern, and another in London. Showcasing music by many of the artists that have joined her throughout the years in clubs, on the radio and at home, this release is made up of new and unreleased tracks, capturing a sound that has continued to evolve in its restless search for new musical directions. From the deep, soulful and emotive tones of Warm's "Blue Sunrise" or 2000Black's "Plastic Jam", to Afro influenced spiritual life music as heard by the lady herself (with Alex Attias) on "Jelly Bubble Rise", through to RH label staple Aardvark's hi-tech soul deconstruction "Aap Noot" and Mr Fingers stone cold classic "Survivor" - Sassy J takes you on an evocative sonic journey from start to finish.
Review: If you like your beats downtempo and your soundscapes crafted from an eclectic variety of sounds then you're in the right place with this two-track EP from Rush Hour. Underpinned by steady, unhurried drums and a throbbing synth bassline, 'Part 1' of 'Demedim Mi' draws largely from the boxes marked 'Indian' and 'sub-aquatic' for its sound set, with the product of all this coming on like the aural equivalent of bumbling into an ashram tripping at 5am. 'Part 2' tones down the subcontinental vibes just slightly, and ends up leaning a little more towards the moody and cinematic side as a result.
Review: Originally only available as a 12" single that was only sold in Rush Hour's legendary Amsterdam store, Masalo's 2018 debut single has finally made it to digital download. Both tracks doff a cap towards the spacey and intergalactic end of the Italo-disco spectrum, with Masalo opting for unfussy drum machine rhythms and throbbing, arpeggio style basslines Opener "New Dance" is the more obviously disco-centric of the two tracks, with jaunty riffs, lilting synth-pop melodies and ricocheting, proto-house style drum fills rising above a suitably druggy groove. "Cycles", meanwhile, is a little deeper and even more intergalactic in tone, an effect emphasized via trippy vocal chants and crystalline lead lines that appear to drift across the universe.
Review: Here's something to set the pulse racing: a much-needed reissue of Klein and MBO's Ron Hardy and Larry Levan favourite "The MBO Theme". What makes this release rather special, though, is not the presence of the killer original version - an instrumental prototype for their later classic "Dirtytalk" - but rather the addition of a ridiculously obscure South African re-make by Warrior that one of Rush Hour's resident crate-diggers stumbled across last year. It's arguably even better than the original. Not only does it operate at a slightly slower tempo, but it also includes some fine fretless bass and wonderfully spacey synthesizer re-recordings of the track's famous lead lines. It makes the package simply essential in our eyes.
Review: Amsterdam based producer Jordan 'GCZ' Czmanski wears many hats, whether as part of Juju & Jordash, Magic Mountain High or as part of Mullholland Free Clinic with David Moufang. He now makes his solo debut on Rush Hour with this awesome EP of neon treasures. From the funky old school techno vibe of "Pinball Lizzard" with its wayward melodies and cracking rhythms - on what the label best described themselves as - a multi-ball dancefloor battle against the Grand Lizard.
Review: Since the turn of the decade, Jungle By Night have not only established themselves as Holland's premier Afro-funk fusionists, but also won hearty praise from legendary Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen. "Livingstone", their fifth full-length excursion, is every bit as essential as its' predecessors. It sees the tight nine-piece speed between South African influenced dancefloor jazz-funk ("Pompette"), spacey downtempo workouts ("Ja Precis"), romping dancefloor workouts (the sublime "Love Boat"), deep tropical shufflers ("Stormvodel", the Giallo-influenced "Hum in Bell"), reggae-fired epics (the two-part brilliance of "Spectacles") and organ-heavy, boogie-rich rubs ("Spending Week"). Throughout, the band's composition, playing and production is close to perfect, making "Livingstone" another must-have instrumental set.
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