Review: With previous releases on Internasjonal, Dirt Crew, Mirau and Permanent Vacation to his name, Neil 'Mano Le Tough' Mannion is clearly a producer on the rise. Here he brings his melody-driven, musically layered take on deep house to Buzzin' Fly, a label that has forged its reputation on promoting similarly melodic fodder. "Stories" is delightful, a kind of gently undulating deep house fairytale that quietly rises and falls over seven spellbinding minutes. "Take It Back" and "From The Start" offer more straight-up dancefloor potential whilst retaining a similar level of inventiveness (the later, for example, features a great guitar breakdown).
Review: Salted Music's warm and hazy deep house has always been reliably summery, though this multi-artist EP is even more sun-kissed than usual. Austins Groove does a terrific job setting the tone with 'Take Hold', where emotive female vocals, rave-ready riffs and thickset synth stabs bounce atop a chunky groove, before Rafael Yapudijan and Igor Cunha reach for the filters on flute-sporting, funk-flecked disco-house number 'When I'm In Your Arms'. Tom Conrad and Andy Robertson deliver an even hotter and warmer take on disco-house on the fabulous 'When It's Over' - all rubbery bass guitar, crispy snares, flanged guitars and hazy Rhodes chords - while Andy Bach's 'Bring Back The Joy' is a supremely squelchy fusion of disco, synth-boogie and deep house that will be putting smiles on faces all summer long.
Review: We're firmly of the opinion that Felipe Gordon is one of the breakout stars of 2020, thanks in no small part to a succession of must-check releases for such labels as Toy Tonics, Lost Palms and Local Talk. He's certainly the star attraction on this joint EP on Off Track Recordings, first dazzling with the chunky, warming and jazzy solo deep house cut 'We All Got The Time', before collaborating with fellow rising star Will Buck on the similarly Rhodes-laden peak-time workout 'Back Into Time'. Buck delivers two fine solo outings of his own, too: the sparkling jazz-funk-goes-classic house bump of 'I Think It's Too Late' and the riotously good angular acid-funk of 'I'll Be Right There'.
Review: Scott Diaz has a sizeable discography to his name, so it's little surprise that his latest expansive EP for Grand Plans is a mature and superbly produced affair. Check, for example, the grown-up feel of opener "Mistreated", where heart-aching soulful house vocal samples ride a backing track full of jazz-flecked drums, twinkling music box melodies and yearning chords. The same sort of praise could be heaped onto the languid electric pianos, bumping beats and half spoken, half sung vocals of "Take It Back" (where vocalist KE urges us all to focus on the music, rather than the technology DJs now use), as well as the sample-heavy smoothness of "I Sold My Soul". In other words, it's a luscious EP for those who like their house deep and soulful.
Review: Craig Smith and Graeme Clark have gathered together an impressive crew of producers to remix tracks from last year's 10th anniversary full-length, "Find Your Rhythm". Perhaps the most high profile of the lot, Alexander Lay-Far, provides the most stunning of the five included revisions, delivering a punchy, breakbeat-driven version of "Back Where It All Began" rich in fluttering synths, cut-up samples and subtle nods to disco and deep house. Also tickling our fancy is Afrobad's jaunty, polyrhythmic take on "Find Your Rhythm" and Deep Space Orchestra's sub-heavy, intergalactic revision of "One Way Out", which comes accompanied by lots of subtle nods towards bleep-era UK techno. To complete a brilliant package, both Matthias Schober and Jad Lee (as Jad & The) serve up wonderfully deep, floor-ready revisions.
Review: Back in 1988, Chicagoan DJ Joe Lewis delivered Lost In Tracks, an early acid onslaught that has since become a must-have for serious house collectors. Some 28 years on, it finally gets a reissue on Clone's Classic Cuts series. All six of Lewis's tracks from the original release are present (David Whiting's short percussion track, tagged on to the '88 12" as a bonus, has been omitted), and are here presented in newly re-mastered form. As you might expect, the material sits somewhere between sweaty jack-tracks and handclap-heavy box-jams, with "Just Hold Back The Feelin" - with its' sampled diva vocal lines and classic Chi-town bassline - and wild, ragging "One On One" amongst the many highlights. Given that original copies are "almost unobtainable", this should be on your shopping list.
Review: For this second set of remixes of tracks from their tenth anniversary album "Find Your Rhythm", 6th Borough Project have roped in some of their closest musical pals to provide sparkling new revisions. Predictably, all and sundry do a fine job. OOOFT! leads the way with a woozy, spacey and impeccably constructed "Deep Mix" of "Bad News", while Frederick delivers two tasty revisions of "Right Next Time", of which the driving, percussive and spaced out "Elegant Remix" is our pick. Elsewhere, Deep Space Orchestra's luscious rework of the same track is a loved-up, slow-building intergalactic treat, while the Haku Dub of "Release" is a bouncy and bounding workout rich in Red Zone style riffs and squelchy acid lines.
Review: Like many of his contemporaries, Joaquin 'Joe' Claussell quickly became bored during NYC's first Covid-19 lockdown last year, so used the time to craft Raw Tones, his first solo album for nigh on 13 years. The set is built around weighty analogue basslines and vintage-sounding drum machine rhythm tracks, with Claussell frequently adding melancholic piano solos, his own spoken word and improvised vocals, and flashes of the African and Latin-inspired percussion sounds that he's long been known for. It's. ahugely successful formula, with highlights including the similarly sleazy 'Break Free' and 'You Mutha Fucka', the sunrise deep house beauty of 'Way Back Then', the sweaty and cymbal-heavy 'If It's All In Your Kind Let It Out' and the slo-mo sweetness of 'Hallucination Ejection'.
Review: For the latest stop on their whistle-stop tour of feelgood house history, Defected's 4 To The Floor offshoot parks up outside Sandy Rivera's studio and asks the Kings of Tomorrow man to gather together all known versions of his 1998 LT Brown hook-up Come Into My Room. Given that the track has been remixed and reissued countless times since, that's some task. We're particularly enjoying the pumping but dreamy soulful house flex of the "Take It Back Mix" and the jazzy, broken rhythms of "Sandy's Remix", though Rivera's more electronic and European sounding "09 Remix" and the bustling, bass-propelled "Toolroom Boys Remix" are also rather special. Also worth checking is one of the earliest reworks from 1998: the low-slung, DJ Sneak style disco-house hypnotism that is the D-Menace remix.
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