Steve Bug - Collaboratory

Entitled Collaboratory, the release comes in the wake of his recent
single compilation. But while this effort is Bug in full-fledged
collaboration mode-hence the title-it is also very much an album that
contains a variety of moods and sounds. Along for the ride on the
record are Cassy, Donnacha Costello, Cle, Simon Flower and more. To
sweeten the pot, Bug reportedly only used "the finest analog equipment,
outboard gear and an analog console" in the production.

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Sarrass - Home At The Sea / Breathe

Long playing and progressive deeper house from the Compost Black Label series, introducing newcomer Sarass with a cool two tracker. 'Home At The Sea' is built with long mixes in mind and develops some well poised crowd-teasing elements, while 'Breathe' on the flip is a classier Chicago via NYC slow burner, made for fans of Jerome Sydenham, Dennis Ferrer and the more sophisticated end of the spectrum.

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Architeq - Birds Of Prey

It's always a nice surprise to come across something that you honestly haven't ever heard before, so i'll start with a thank you to Architeq, er, ta! As far as we can tell this is the debut effort from Architeq's Sam Annand, here with a little help from Scott Donald and Jerome Tcherneyan on drums and percussion, but the production is entirely credited to Sam, which is impressive once you realise that the discordant grooves contained within have come from the mind of one person. The easist way I can describe this EP is as if Luke Vibert had attempted to consolidate each of his separate projects starting off with Kerrier District Disco for the basic groove and blending in his jungle, grime, and general freaky beat work into each each track, forming grooves bursting with energy and sprouting rhythms at seemingly random junctions to become a mass of disco bassed mentallism that will confuse, confound and delight a dancefloor in equal measures. Anyway, check the samples and get down yourself.


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VA - Veertein EP

Festival season is knocking on the doors and we've got the perfect record for the upcoming season - its "Veertein" with tracks by Plastic FM and Dole & Kom. After "Justice For Another World" Plastic FM again proove how to produce real shelves with "Deadline"!! Drive and punch paired with huuge amount of energy dominating the track and guides directly to the mainfloor!! Terrific follow up by the swiss!! On the b side we welcome a new act in the Ostwind-Camp! Dole & Kom from Berlin should be known by everyone in the league... They deliver 2 husky tracks with "On The Run" and "Boxed In". "On The Run" comes fleet-footed and avoids stumbling in off road territory - the one for the festival floors!! On point techhouse with Detroit roots. "Boxed In" comes a bit darker and marches as a steam engine - neither left nor right - max filled boiler, straight down the line. All in all an amazing new record in our Limited series...

"Kompakt"


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Xpansul & Imek - El Bienestar

El Bienestar is collaboration between one of the Spanish techno pioneers, Xpansul, and Imek. Their friendship started long ago: Imek’s first DJ set was in the club where Xpansul was the resident DJ, and 10 years after that their friendship generated a common musical project. This project started some months ago, when they composed together ‘23,’ a track that was included in the second NET28 compilation. It was a powerful and engaging experience, so they decided to join forces and produce a full shared release, El Bienestar, where both could explore common areas of their musical sensibility. ‘La Salud’ was the first track they produced for this release: a classic and emotive techno piece with deep chords and driving bass, followed by ‘El Bienestar,’ a 100% playable DJ tool made with the dancefloor in mind, and ‘La Alegría,’ a super danceable track filled with Xpansul’s characteristic percussion madness.”


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Mihalis Safras - Cry For The Last Dance

Safras has a long history in the electronic music scene of Greece, becoming one of his home country's most celebrated DJs over the course of the last decade. A few years ago, however, he decided that DJing alone wasn't enough, and jumped head first into the world of music production. He's since become quite prolific, with his techno and tech house tracks making their way onto labels like Soma, Great Stuff and Kevin Gorman's Mikrowave imprint.

It's Trapez owner Riley Reinhold who has taken most to Safras' sound, commissioning five singles for his Trapez Limited sub-label, and now releasing Cry for the Last Dance, which is his first album to be released on CD. It's also a first for Reinhold, as Safras' album will be the debut long-player on Trapez Limited rather than its bigger brother. Taking in minimal, tech house and techno, the collection compiles eleven previously unreleased tracks before drawing to a close with a new edit of the trance-tinged "Here Comes the Rain."


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Mark Broom - Deal Or No Deal

Dublin's ace D1 imprint gets the honour of releasing the best Mark Broom 12" we've heard in a very long time with a hugely recommended 4 tracker of sumptuous slowhouse and dubby techno. While his DJ sets are consistently ace, his productions of late have fallen short since the late 90's Pure Plastic heyday, but 'Deal Or No Deal' and 'Runners' on the A-side mark a return to form with a combination of heavyweight dub techno/house aesthetics with swollen subbass swoops that we can't get enough of right now. Think Marko Fuerstenburg with added Reese bass and you're pretty much there. The B-side flips the styles into a more sedate tempo with sub 120bpm house rhythms licked with vintage analogue synth chord sequences, done simple and proper for the perfect effect. This is probably one of the best deeper techno records you'll hear this week and comes well recommended!

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Burnski - Draw Your Sword

Fine tech-house minimalism from Burnski making his debut appearance on Poker Flat. Made for larger dancefloors, 'Draw Your Sword' is maximised for impact with a crowd appeasing climax and heavyweight kicks.



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Basement Freaks - Gypsy Breaks (Typsy Edit)

Natalia Clavier - Nectar

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Fatboy Slim & Koen Groeneveld - Rockafeller Skank

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Matias Aguayo - The 99 seconds

Soul Jazz and Kompakt's Argentianian hero Matias Aguayo aka one half of Closer Musik offers up another plate of confoundingly immense and oddbal rhythm experiments for fans of his indecipherable style. '99 Seconds' is a very odd construction, built from a tumbling Latin/Villalobos debted percussion pallette, castrated horn bleats and the occassional bell hit, you never quite know where you are or where you're going on this little trip but we can assure you it's some very strange fun. 'Bondhi' on the flip drops the tempo to a sub 120bpm shuffle with rippling conga lines and a pared back approach that places the track somewhere between raw Chicago house and something from the Uwe Schmidt/Atom TM handbook, while final track 'Rita' should really spin your head full circle on a 113bpm slo-jak groove through spherical bell rubs, pop flavoured basslines and a subtle taste of avant garde new wave style from the likes of Arthur Russel or Moondog. Awesome.

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Marco Carola - The Tribe

Marco Carola revisits his M_nus sublabel 2M with two warm and tribalish house cuts for the stylin' Europhiles. 'The Tribe' uses a palette of warm and analogue sounding drums with rolling bass and non-synthetic horns to work up a very crowd friendly vibe, while 'Drumming' on the flip strips back to the essentials with a minimised groove gradually developing layers of live percussion into a useful tracky house DJ tool.

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Jay Shepheard - Compost Black Label #43

Glamorous euro-disco and Balaeric influenced deeper house from Jay Shepheard on where else but Compost Black Label. The most interesting cut here would have to be the 105bpm 'Absolute Voltage', set to cruise control with slowly arpeggiated bass rolls and a warm boned Balaeric sexiness, or 'International Carpet' with a deep house meets twilight disco vibes for the jet setters.

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Ben Klock - Before One EP

Functioning as a prelude to his impending LP, One, Ben Klock releases the appropriatelt titled Before One. The tone is uncompromisingly focused on streamlined reductionism, with the filtered, somehow ghosly title track proving especially wonderful for its pared down simplicity and delay-spun melodicism. 'Init Two' takes on a grander feel, and although the looped structure retains that all-important minimalist aesthetic, the production occupies an orchestrally proportioned amount of bandwidth. It's a majestic production - one of those tracks that always feels as if it's teetering on the edge of something big without ever feeling the need to go beyond the brink. Excellent.

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Rio Padice - Road To Alberqueque

Fine deeper tech house minimalism from Italian Rio Padice for Metroline, contributing three tracks of swirling deeper housisms with a sprightly technofied edge and a wicked remix from Ray Okpara, setting to work on the bassline and padding the subs out into spongy cyclical shapes to find your groove in.

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Rrygular - 3 Years Rregular

Tracklist:

01. From Karaoke To Stardom - Hometown Bulkk Klubb (Dapayk Remix)
02. Marek Bois - Bed Boi Pill
03. Butane - All Out Of Ice
04. Kleinschmager Audio - Audio1
05. Christian Dittmann - Dub 1 (D.Diggler Remix)
06. Lump - All In Your Mind
07. Staffan Linzatti - Steal The Medical Supplies
08. Marek Bois - Kimpton
09. Ortega & Stavstrand - Spiral
10. Marcel Knopf - Narain
11. The Suffragettes - Ukin
12. From Karaoke To Stardom - Dors-La-Pilule

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part 2

Youandme - Difference EP

Tracklist:

01. Falling 06:18
02. Between 07:15

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Guy Noir - Delusion

Very strong tracks! Will play every time. - Laurent Garnier (F Communication/the Hacienda)

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Get Physical - Full Body Workout Vol. 4

Cool and deeper modern (in)house mix from the Get Physical imprint with a 14 track selection of cuts from the labels finest operators. Jona opens up with his screwy tech house tribalisms on 'Blackened' and there's a general vibe of deeper polyrhythmic house followed with tracks from Daniel Mehlhart, Einzelkind vs Meat, Gavin Herlihy, Patrice Baumel, Lopazz and the rest. It's a prime cross section of the state of fresh, modern, and deepstyle tech house and it proves to be in rude health. Get your pumps on and break a sweat.

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Piemont - Strange World Beyond

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2000 And One - Heritage

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Soma - Somabeta

Introducing their new offshoot label, Soma launch this compilation as a means of showcasing the new talent they're nurturing. You'll recognise the likes of Let's Go Outside from Soma's main imprint, and Sui Generis has previously emerged on Rush Hour, but all the acts assembled here are very much new on the scene, looking to make a name for themselves in some shape or other. Highlights come from the alluringly daft Mr Copy and Audiofillia who are permitted two entries: the bloopy micro-squawk of 'Easy', and 'Tu' with its bassline-driven hooks. "Soma proudly launch Somabeta, the imprint's offshoot tailored for new emerging talent. As part of Soma's continuing support of new music Somabeta will provide an avenue for fresh, upcoming producers to have their work released on Scotland's biggest exporter of electronic music, welcoming work from artists around the world"

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Gui Boratto - Take My Breath Away

From the start, it’s clear ‘Take My Breath Away’ is destined both for dancefloors and home stereos with the tracklist split roughly down the middle between Boratto’s standard (and excellent) deep techno tracks and cute electro pop numbers. Driving techno fans will lap up ‘Ballroom’ and ‘Atomic Soda’, electro aficionados might dig ‘Eggplant’, and ‘Take My Breath Away’ and ‘Opus’ will please those who like their techno to burn as slow as a candle. ‘Colors’, ‘Azzurra’ and ‘Les Enfants’ showcases Gui Boratto’s calmer and more joyful side by featuring broken beats, electric guitars and live drums. And fans of the hugely popular ‘Beautiful Life’ might get their euphoria fix from the vocals on ‘No Turning Back’.Overall ‘Take My Breath Away’ is an accomplished continuation of Gui Boratto’s colourful melodies.

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Claro Intelecto - Warehouse Sessions

This long awaited cd compilation marks the end of Mark Stewart's 'Warehouse Sessions', with all the tracks in the series re-mastered at Berlin's dubplates and mastering including a bonus, previously unreleased track, 'W6' available for the first time. The first 12" in the series was released back in early 2006, designed, honed and tweaked for the floor with a shift in focus towards more stripped-down and minimally constructed 4/4 variations with the headier end of the warehouse in mind. "New Dawn"rotates on a heavy slug of post-industrial genius taking the metallic clunk of Monolake/T++ slowed right down and married with the faint ghost of Rhythm and Sound. "X" domiated volume three and is perhaps the best known track in the series - delivering a gargantuan chug through a barely contained 4/4 spasm, underpinned by distorted stabs and a hollow line in thumping kick-drums. It's all fairly restrained until the half-way mark when things suddenly go deep under the influence - a live session of warbling dub stabs fed through a widescreen echo-chamber making for a low-end psychosis that's just devastating. "Only Yesterday" was written in homage to Mr Fingers, a slow, deep, pulsating House classic utilising a sick padded bass progression, caressed by pristine hi-hats and very little else. "Instinct" opened volume four with a percussive spine so crisp and spacious it almost threw us off our chairs the first time we heard it, while "Post" on the flipside pushed us a few hours deeper into the night with a twilight carousel of sparkling keys and another one of those endlessly cavernous basslines, venturing into a classic breakdown that brought those keys back. "Hunt You Down", meanwhile, deploys a shocking Maurizio style dub workout in 4/4 that makes use of a relentlessly sharp and deep signature, accompanied by stretched chords and metallic shards that subvert the track throughout its 11 minute duration. The final edit included on the compilation, W6, was taken from the last Warehouse sessions and is available only on this format.

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Andres Ilar - Sworn

It's been two years since Anders Ilar recorded his excellent Organza EP for Level Rec, and with Sworn he returns for a full-length outing. For this latest album, Ilar goes far beyond the ordinary parameters of music formatted around techno beats and delves into a far more involved electronica sound. Although tracks like opener 'Hillside' and the electroacoustically slanted 'Colours Of Rain' are keen to slap a kick sound on every crotchet, it could almost be an arbitrary gesture to signpost this music towards a comfortable genre classification. As with much of Vladislav Delay's more beat-driven work, there's a lot more to this than whatever's suggested by the drum programming, and some of Ilar's music shifts between adventurous abstraction and the kind of melodic elaboration most techno producers would consider to be surplus to requirements. 'September Nights' could be an old Arovane production but for its stringent 4/4 backbone. Otherwise the ornate, experimental approach to melodic development is straight out of the post-Autechre mindset. Importantly though, none of this sounds dated or out of place, instead carving out a rather unique corner of the electronic music universe that's all its own.

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John Tejada - Fabric 44

For his Fabric release, John Tejada leaves his mark indelibly on his selections, carefully and discreetly editing his way through tracks by artists such as Substance (as remixed by Shed), Donnacha Costello, Pigon, and LJ Kruzer, while throwing in a healthy supply of his own productions, both solo and in conjunction with long-term collaborators Arian Leviste and Justin Maxwell. The entire mix seems to uphold a peculiarly high standard of production, with insightful picks like 'Equalized001' by Eq'd revealing a discerning ear. The fact that Tejada's been so thorough in his sequencing and mixing really shines through too, and the whole playlist presents the aesthetic of a single, overarching narrative seamlessly evolving through the likes of Namlook's 'Subharmonic Atoms' and Donnacha Costello's 'Colourseries Olive B', segueing into the low-frequency robustness of WAX's 'WAX10001'. Tejada himself has billed the mix as being akin to an "electronic symphony", and as potentially daft sounding as that is, there's a defined sense of continuity and organisational meticulousness evident throughout.

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Dirt Crew - Soundwave

Dirt Crew's 'Soundwave' gets reworked by Quarion and Filippo Moscatello, backed up by original Dirt Crew track 'Blow'. The Quarion remix gets the EP underway with a nicely delay-saturated stab sound that maintains a kind of watery momentum over the course of its eight minutes, while Moscatello opts for a slightly rougher sound with heavy use of synthesizer lines and punchy kick sounds. Finally, 'Blow' introduces a looser feel with a solid house beat holding together spaced out edits and sample interjections.

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SCSI 9 - Easy As Down

Russia's premier minimal techno duo SCSI-9 have notched up some 25 releases for countless imprints from Craig Richards' Tyrant to Force Tracks to the indomitable Kompakt over the last 10 years. 'Easy As Down' is their fourth album to date and features a skillfully calcified sound which warrants the huge respect they've garnered from all corners of the minimal, tech house and techno scenes. 'Vesna, Lastic & Elliot' intorduces some considered synth chord sequences in harmony with an austere bowed cello to cleanse the techno-spirit, before 'Vesna, Lastic and elliot' takes your breath away with a lush and perfectly Kompaktian Pop ambient swooner. The spherical jazz harmonics of 'Nothing will change it' feature gorgeous vocals from Ryba and start to put this album in the post-club listening bracket but the run of tracks from 'Tu Eres' to 'Outtro' maintains an ambiguous function that can easily keep the party perked or reclined depending on your inclinations. A fine triumph for lush and ultra clean minimal techno.

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Cobblestone Jazz - 23 Seconds

A whopping triple LP outing for the Candian jazz/techno fusionists Cobblestone Jazz, which for the uninitiated, comprises Mathew Jonson, Danuel Tate and Tyger Dhula. Traditionally, Tate's keyboard work has given Cobblestone Jazz a distinctive live feel, but launching into the opening title track here there's no real evidence of that, instead everything has more of a programmed sound to it, albeit with a lively, analogue warmth. Elements of Rhodes and smooth chord changes start to appear in 'Slap The Back', and on the next side 'PBD (LP Edit)' features a bit of soloing, but the overall feel is one of silky movements within a fairly fastened-down techno framework. 'Hived Touch' is far more interesting, exhibiting some big bass and substantial, muffled beat production, yet this sort of minimalism is abandoned altogether for 'Lime In Da Coconut' which marks a departure for sunnier, more playful sounds. Even the beat seems to have a spring in its step. More overtly jazzy numbers crop up towards the end of the album, with the vocoder funk of 'W (LP Edit)' standing out in particular. Cobblestone Jazz have clearly honed and streamlined their approach to music-making since their debut 12" five years ago, and as a result the potentially quite jarring elements of live instrumentation and programmed electronics sound as though they've reached a natural balance on 23 Seconds.


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Part 2