it's all good...

Space & Time

A new label, yay, in a rapidly shrinking world of tangible vinyl pressings, it’s to be applauded that people can still be bothered to take the financial cost of going through with what is surely a labour of love in these digital times. Two measured tempo tracks, with the first being more upfront as it were with the flip side demonstrating a more introspective and deeper slant. Time & Space is the track for me, rumbling bass, soft key sounds and a judicious spoken word sample – promising start from a fledgling imprint, hopefully the harbinger of more quality to come.

Release at the end of April and appears to be still widely available at time of writing from:
Black Market | Chemical Records | hhv.de | juno

Laak – The Beyond EP

Pinky — Sun, 22 May 2011 20:45:31 +0000

Back Of Beyond

Don’t Ever Leave

Cosmic Causeway

Cantankerous Emotions

Second release by both the label and the artist, continuing with the form illustrated on the Negatively Seductive release from last year and again supported by DJ Jus-Ed on his Underground Quality Radio Show. Kicking off with the fastest of the four cuts, the first track foremostly stakes it’s claim to the dancefloor with prominent percussive elements and a brooding step-looped bassline before some smooth butter-chords are melted into the mix. However, possibly because I’m not out as often as I perhaps ought to be these, this is my least favourite track of the four here.

What sells me this EP is the laid back groove of Cosmic Causeway, bringing to mind early 90s productions by the likes of Ronald & Rheji Burrell on labels like Citi Records. From the tinkling keyboard motif that begins and runs throughout most of the composition and the delayed introduction of a soft bassline; this is a track that playfully tugs and beckons rather than bully you along ahead of it. Cantankerous Emotions continues with the well matured deepness; again, bringing to mind tracks like Breakdown Wo! and Lake Placid by Language from the 1992 release, In The Lab EP. With Don’t Ever Leave also cut from the same un-hurried cloth, Back Of Beyond is the concession to the dancers whilst the rest of the EP is for the heads and mine is happily nodding away. If Laak is happy to let the music speak for itself, my ears will always be receptive to more material – an artist to look out for.

Available at time of writing from:
chemical records | juno | piccadilly

Morphosis – Dirty Matter (NWAQ’s Via Mezzacapo Dub)

Pinky — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:46:00 +0000

It’s been up on my YouTube channel since December but only just getting round to reviewing this. This remix must’ve been raised from the Mariana Trench, it’s that deep. Whilst the track as a whole doesn’t particularly change a great deal, you are aurally thrown in the deep end as it were, right from the get go with a pounding bass and kick. Once locked in by the lower frequencies, you can’t but help to let the undulations of the rest of the sounds just wash over you, over and over. Finally, after period that can seem a lot longer than the duration of the track, it fades out, the sounds of everyday normality re-assert themselves, you open your eyes, quickly look left and right, blink a couple of times… and reach forward to move the stylus back to the beginning.

Available at time of writing from:
delsin | honest jons

Begin – Velocity

Pinky — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:54:56 +0000

Velocity

Velocity Part 2

Curbcrawler

With summer spilling out of the title track, you could easily be forgiven for forgetting that it’s still mostly dark, wet, cold and miserable outside (at least in the northern hemisphere) however, if you were fortunate enough to be one of the few that received advanced promos of this release then those audio waves of sunshine would’ve been radiating out of your speakers at the tail end of summer last year. With the repeated coda sung in a foreign tongue, it brings to mind Transglobal Underground’s Temple Head without the big beats or the rap.

Velocity Part 2 continues with a more stripped down approach centred around a repeated keyboard refrain which is what initially hooked me into this release. Curbcrawler begins as a sparse brooding chugger of a track that then busts out with a bass keyboard line, adding a small sample of a guitar *schick* sound that for some reason, sounds ever so familiar before dissolving into squelchy keyboard sounds and more guitar. Close your eyes and be borne away into a flight of fancy that summer was already here and you were hearing this lying on the grass at a music festival somewhere; which, on the strength of these three tracks, is something that could be quite likely in 2011.

Available at time of writing from:
clone | juno | piccadilly