since james priestly and giles smith’s first gatherings of forty people in a london pub over a decade over ago, they have grown into two of the most respected promoters in the city. and yes, whilst there have been some inspired bookings over the years; it’s their own dj sets which have most defined the seretsundaze brand (which now encompasses a booking agency and a recently rejuvenated label as well as parties across the planet). dealing most often in deep but clubby, proper house (rather than loopy, dull as dishwater catwalk stuff), it’s an aesthetic this double cd compilation would suggest they have perfectly mastered.
teshno
'in germany, they can't say 'techno,' they say 'teshno'' ~ seth troxler [march 2008]
10 years of secretsundaze mixed by james priestly & giles smith on secretsundaze
teshcast g ~ the editor
teshno is two this month and i wanted to do something special to celebrate. ‘what better than to do my own mix’ i thought. that was about four months ago. i’ve never done such a thing ever before but, in various stages over the last weeks, i have faded, slammed, disharmoniously mixed and fluked together a collection of tracks which didn’t clash too horribly. that said, they all convey the sort of vibes i like in my music… emotion, looseness, warmth, texture. hell, some might even make you want to tap your foot.
trickski ~ interview
if you like slow, organic, deep, oft dark and variously vocal house music, trickski‘s considered debut on suol is the one for you (out 17/06). the culmination of over a decade of music making, it’s an introverted album that bares its slowly bleeding heart on its sleeve. pulling this way and that so suggestively, it passes through a lifetime’s emotions over the course of 17 tracks, some of which are short segues, others more languid and drawn out grooves, but each relates to the other and oils the overall ride with style.
andre lodemann ~ riven reminiscences on freerange
jimpster’s freerange is nothing if not reliable. serving up solid ep after solid ep of deep but mobile house music that wallows in the dusky light of an early evening dancefloor, they here offer something that immediately stands out from the crowd; a new ep (well, two originals plus a san soda remix) riven reminiscences, from always simmering german producer andre lodemann.
label profile ~ andy butler’s mr.intl
you have to admire andy butler’s resolve with this label… so enamored is he with the halcyon house days of betwixt ’84 and 95 that he’s birthed an imprint, mr.intl, specifically to re-investigate that period’s aesthetic.
teshcast e ~ damiano von erckert
so last week i reviewed damiano von erckert’s debut release, then spoke to him about life, his label ava. and other stuff, now i’m happy to be hosting this mix from the cologne man as the 5th installment of the teshcast series. but a glance down the tasty tracklist should get any house fan all excited given the inclusion of venerated names like omar s, soulphiction, and kyle hall, whist listening to them blended together with martyn, kraftwerk and 6th borough project is no dull experience either.
brawther – do it yourself on secretsundaze
criminally, i’ve never been to secretsundaze. despite that, though, whenever the name crops up a certain sound track begins to play in my head. it’s an unassuming one, a groovy one, and a subtly sexy one. listening to this (a first original release, and the first of any sort – ie mix cd – since 2008) tells me i’ve not been far wrong: i’d be lying if i said it was anything wholly new, but warm, well produced house will never sound tired.
‘do it yourself’ is to-the-point, where the point is to get caught up in a deep, chunky and tunnelling groove and stay there for, in this instance, six and half minutes. cutting through the sub-bloated throb are garage-derived wooden hits and masked female vocal inflections, both of which do little to distract you from the ongoing march, but both of which are important touches to bring the whole thing out of the speakers with a little extra dynamism: no nonsense business, to be sure.
contributing his second track, ‘spacerman funk’ young parisian brawther again harks back to less exhaustingly creative times (good thing), where an unaffected boom-bap, crafted on vintage gear and with suggestive sampling, was enough to get the job done. and frankly, when done as economically yet authentically as this (it’s aged with a lovely dusty crackle), it still is: pure, unadulterated deep house… no more, no less, it’s effortlessly cool.
after reading that, it should come as no surprise to learn that brathwer has been raised under the tutelage of chez damier; whilst traces of pepe bradock and kerri chandler are never that far away. it may surprise you, however, that george fitzgerald is on remix duty. breaking things down into restless, punchier kicks and rattling hits, you dive into deep, hotflush-styled bass territory that’s typically infused with a radiating glow of tonal warmth and refreshing airiness. evolutionary not revolutionary, the whole ep is solid as a rock.
pittsburgh track authority ~ the first four ep on uzuri
sure, everyone’s always on about the authentic and connoisseur imprints in detroit, amsterdam and berlin which are at the vanguard of the day’s house and techno scene, but london has them too you know. uzuri is one such example, with the likes of cassy and anton zap defining their assured output to date. it’s output that goes at its own pace, delves deeper than most and is built on a rich heritage of vintage d and c town sounds, but which also manages to look to the future. exactly fitting that mould is the triumvirate of american production talents that is pittsburgh track authority (featuring the vociferously vocal tom pipecock of the infinitestatemachine blog) who here turn in a sumptuously seductive selection of live and improvised sounding jams. the temptation is to label them retroistic, but that’s likely just down to the fact that you don’t often come across such considered underground music in the age of disposable digital production.
‘duskshaped’ comes on with all the instrumental funk and soul of a josé james record: there are multiple key and bass lines which roll freely from start to finish, always with an unpredictable fluidity. big claps and scuffy kicks power the track along, and you could as well be in the audience at a live jazz bar as you could be at home listening to a modern day house label: it’s classy stuff. a little perkier, ‘verticalimpact’ certainly stands more upright than the opener, but trudges along on a squelchy and slo-mo acid line which crawls so immovably at its own lethargic pace that it inevitably has you yearning for it to go faster. but it never does. in stubbornly holding back, there is a tension which keeps you locked because, as they say, the thrill of the catch is in the chase, and this is a looong chase.
imbued with a parrish-esque afro funk, next track ‘bloodlands’ again has itself stretched in all directions, with rippling chords dripping over a barely rotating sub bass and buried-in-the-mix percussion. contributing to the languorousness is a gently rising and falling male chanting somewhere off in the distance. the whole arrangement swells effortlessly forwards and backwards like a midnight wave breaking on a moonlit beach, and it’s some of the most sensuous house you are likely to have heard in a long while. ’77b’, meanwhile, taps a tantalisingly slow pace to start, with a muffled, flat bass pattern injecting a subtle sense of crescendo. of course, you’re forever riding on the crest father than falling down the other side, with cheeky, suggestive little chords brightening the whole simmering arrangement at various intervals. the selective placement of some swooning strings are the icing on the cake; the thing that have you boil over into emotive whimpers of ‘oooo yeah’, even though the track itself stays well and truly restrained.
all four efforts here are masterfully balanced – just enough to have that little something that makes you want to hear them all over again, but nowhere near too much as for anything to get lost or crowded out in the mix: every detail is important, every detail does a job; every detailed has clearly been fawned over and coming together they make for some of the most powerful and well appointed slow burners you could wish for.
prosumer – panorama bar 03 on ostgut ton
unless you’re a fair to middlin discogs bod, i reckon it would be pretty hard to date any given record on this mix. new ones, old ones and curveballs alike are all marbled with a classy detroit/chicago classicism that renders them all similarly aged and authentic sounding, regardless of their native era. it’s that interchangeableness between old and new that means pbar 03 is not a mix by numbers, but instead a timeless and tireless house workout that punches through a whole workshop full of gears. frankly (in the least shirt off, ‘oi-oi’ way possible) it’s banging…
vibrant and dynamic analogue sounds are an overriding aesthetic, with a thumping, four to the floor bolster omnipresent below. and that in itself is great, because far too often (presumably in fear of losing you to the monotony or forgetableness of their tunes) too many jocks tread water in ‘evocative’ downbeat puddles or kick their heels in noodly, a-groovy doodles when recording club mixes. prosumer, though, keeps you engaged by swiftly unravelling a different strain of house dna with each clipped progression. and there are 17 of them in all, so you’d better belt-up…
after the beautifully insular melancholy of steffi’s opener, ‘sadness’, an impulsive lick is immediately set with the free falling vibes of ‘heard’. from that point on, the mix planes with perfect poise, carving out firm groove after firm groove, momentarily resetting before charging off down another rich corridor of sound: instead of big breakdowns, it’s the quick, dj sneak-like mixing style which keeps you propped up throughout. raw beats, warm chords, kicking basslines…. each is just another dash of textured punctuation in the multifarious house conversation which prosumer so efficiently articulates overall.
one minute you’re going “whooo yeah” in ‘the house of god’, then you’re surfing carefree on a rolling rhythm before the next passage has you diving down to lock onto a deep, surging bassline. though decidedly discernible, the stylistic switch ups are also deft, with the tension between tracks resulting in an even more engaging ride. much like the cover suggests, then, a prosumer set offers many different views of the same underlying thing… house music; sweet, sweet house music.
label profile ~ feelharmonic
it was never really planned, but teshno seems to becoming a one-stop shop for the lowdown on auspicious new house and techno labels. as such, after an insight into fina and jackoff comes this, a refreshingly candid interview with tim gibney about his new imprint, feelharmonic.
jef k ~ interview
jek f is of the old school: he is one of few contemporary artists who’s primarily made a name for himself through djing, rather than producing. i like that. and you should like that, because it often means such a person is a better dj as a result.
outboxx – kate libby’s / bertie’s groove on immerse
last time i wrote about this label i said “immerse is a rare thing in today’s electronic music landscape… it’s actually underrated. traversing the darkened wormholes between crackling breakbeats, fizzing dubstep and sketchy techno – and despite having its roots in the bass music epicentre that is bristol – the label’s reach is far and wide with artists coming from ukraine, russia, london and the us.”
whilst all that is still true, you can now add house music into the imprint’s ever expanding pot of sounds thanks to this loose, funky two tracker from b- town production duo outboxx.
it’s not over familiar sounding house music, though, instead it seems to come from a different place – one where rounded, bouncing bottom ends are of most importance. adding colour to the warm-up 4/4 pomp of ‘kate libby’s’ are ever rising pads, wooden hits, bubbly claps and subtle hi hats for that all important sense of slide as well as bounce. a sparing ‘booooi’ vocal wins out on occasion to add the all important human touch and a combination of distant key strikes and jazzy sonic sketches blow the whole thing up into a deliciously heartfelt and organic slo-jam.
on the flip, ‘bertie’s groove’ is much more hurried where the beats, organ stabs and more metallic percussion almost fall over each other in their endlessly churning cycles. it’s reminiscent of a diynamic cut for its trackiness and instrumental flourishes, but a building mid-section and sporadic, tension-breaking flutter of keys mark it out more as a perky and quirky house number than a stale slice of dishwasher tech. again organic, again enveloped in sub bass, it’s a charming effort that draws a smile as well as a head nod which, if i were a dj, i would file under ‘classy ‘floor filler.’
christopher rau – how are you on pampa
here comes some more pampa lovin’ on teshno: despite its infancy, the label is fast marking itself out as a go-to label for off-kilter house music in much the same way as has the man behind the imprint, dj koze. for its seventh release, the odd-ball champ enlists fellow hamburger christopher rau – the man who wrote one of 2010’s most considered house oeuvres, asper clouds, on the ever excellent and deeper-than-deep smallville. this time out, though (on at least two of the three tracks) rau seems to be intent on having some fun – he uncouples his bottom ends and lets synths interject wildly and run off at odd angles rather than button them all down in the forward rolling grooves as he did throughout the mature, studied and tethered compositions which made up the aforementioned full length…
‘pervading animal’ opens things with a spring like freshness in place of the dour autumn vibes of asper… long tailed hit-hats, a content house bump and repeatedly rippling keys build and build until they all get stripped back, bunched up and rolled out onto an expansive sonic plain once again. it’s pleasant, not-too-down-on-itself deep house, but rather pales in comparison to the other two offerings.
the first, ‘how are you’ has much more focus on freewheeling, beat driven rhythms, where busy drums pad out quickened, throbbing patterns in place of the flatter, elongated grooves which went before: they are deep but direct and, as they punch along, provide a nice vertical contrast to the aqueous, horizontal spills of the harmonics which bleed into the mix up above.
‘cfr’ is the most unhinged of the lot given the dominant characteristic – a bold, slightly discordant and roughshod synth sound which gets haphazardly layered over a broken kick drum at random intervals. it twists and turns, tunes and de-tunes and generously splatters the track with unpredictable, freaky and after hour colour that comes straight from the most sleep-deprived parts of your brain as it snakes about like an unfixed hose pipe. like all the tracks here, cohesion comes from the warm, finely grained bass pillows which envelop you from the bottom up and, like all the tracks here, it makes for lovely, basement attuned house music which is as good in ‘phones as it is booming outta ‘bins.
steffi – yours & mine on ostgut ton
thought i’d weigh in on this one because it’s proved divisive so far. if you’ve heard any of steffi‘s records (there have been only six) you’ll likely know the issue… can something so familiar and un-original be in any way considered ‘good’? of course it can, as long as it’s done well and shies away from pastiche, and that’s exactly the case throughout the frictionless house excursion that is steffi’s ostgut ton released debut, yours & mine.
also worth considering when embroiled in the artistic merit vs regurgitative cop-out debate is the fact that this berlin based producer is primarily a dj and, by all accounts (haven’t seen her, will soon thankfully) an excellent one. it makes sense, then, that she will make records informed by her many hours at the helm of one of the most revered dancefloors of the day (pbar): she knows exactly the sort of record which gets people moving, so why re-invent the wheel? why not just finely tune what you know to fit your own purpose? as such, come to this expecting warm, high quality, deep-but-driving house music that isn’t too down on itself, and you’ll not be disappointed…
the album hits the ground running with ‘lilo’ which, like the record overall, is built on (and focuses around) an assertive house groove. throughout, discrete acid twitches prick an otherwise harmonic cloud of chords which lingers throughout, and the first surge down into deep space has begun… from there, the kicks spread further apart and the sounds in-between wiggle a little more, or machines get unleashed and sounds bend and ping-pong about more freely, but the grooves are continuous, long and deep, and remain ever present reminders that this is dancing music. classy dancing music, but dancing music.
‘manic moods’ encapsulates the album in six minutes – punchy kicks and firm but not immovable basslines with, should you look for them, some subtle future motifs and cute sci-fi signifiers off somewhere in the distance. it says a lot about the quality of these tracks that, although they are all variations on a tried-and-tested theme, sticking nine of them together on an album doesn’t add up to a bit of a chore come the final few. punctuated as the album is with standouts like the chunky analogue bounce and unashamed vocal passion of ‘yours,’ though, and the amassed effect is instead a well balanced concoction of rejoice and reserve. essentially, these are the powerful tools of steffi’s very personal trade. if you like her trade, you’ll like her tools, because a finer set it would be hard to find.
aeromaschine – basement dubs ep on baalsaal
…friday night. busy week behind you. need to relax a bit before the effort of a night out. can’t get too blissed out though, wont wanna move otherwise…
enter aeromaschine with his sandy house ep for german connoisseur imprint, baalsaal records: it’s a big package that has plenty of lush lateral synths to take you down, but which also has a metropolitan percussive clatter to keep you from sinking too far down . google has rather betrayed me when it comes to finding much out about alin ‘aeromaschine’ crihan (other than the fact’s he romanian) but all three of the original tracks he offers here mean i’ll be keeping out a keen eye in the future.
‘debunking random myths’ opens things with some panning ambiance and circling synths before a throbbing sub bass eventually brings the motion. for the next seven minutes the focus is on rhythmic workout, where smart claps and silvery snaps jiggle and dance around the bassline like moths round a lamp. although once set there are few surprises, the looseness of the rhythm section is what keeps your shoulders dropping, head nodding and feet tapping to this track with it’s every next step.
much less content with itself is ‘not so’ where the sounds linger long-time, the claps grow ever more agitated and paranoid as they go, and eventually a thick acid line says enough is enough before whipping the gloom’s ass with much more purpose. there’s chicago attitude but detroit soul and it’s that duality which makes the track so appealing. equally appealing is pretty much everything staines house godfather bearweasel ever does, with the warm lazy dub mix (of a track you get on the digi version) he contributes here no exception.
full-as-you-like kicks thud thud thud from the off, their groovy patter rolling ever deeper whilst dynamic synths endlessly diffuse in the background. you’re only gently nudged from the ensuing hazy revere by some delightful digital raindrops which drip down from above at the breakdown, only for the snug drums to return and loop to infinity (or eight minutes) and beyond. this man is one forever honing his sound – a smoky, woody, basement dub vibe which offers much more warmth than the colder, more metallic and techno derived faire of the likes of echochord, luke hess et al – and i for one am glad he is.
the final cut is pretty much directionless (in a good way) and drifts round in the same warm house puddle throughout, with only a sparingly used marvin gaye sample for company. it’s slo-mo, it’s sexy, and it makes you wanna go ‘aawwww yeaaaaaah.’ buyers of a digital persuasion get three bonus tracks into the bargain. what’s not to love?
plat du jour ~ tama sumo
[ok, since i wrote this last night someone by the name of tama sumo has commented on the mix saying it's not hers... whosoever it belongs to, it's good, so listen away...]
tama sumo’s panormamabar 02 mix (the club at which she is resident) from late 2009 was one of the finest of recent memory: great records, well mixed, with the odd well received curveball laid down toward the end. imagine my delight when i came across this live recording of hers from nye at berghain, then. it’s almost two and half hours long (which means it’s unhurried; records play out as they should – to the end) and starts off with some firm footed dub shrouded in a mist of echo and reverb, before pushing on through some synthy futurism, kicking but controlled techno and plenty of dry, funky subtleness. things get freaky towards the end with some frantic acid and pure warehouse vibes meaning that although ‘musical journey’ is a cringe-y term, it’s certainly an apt description for what sumo offers up.
deepak sharma & dieter krause – wolkenreise on hidden recordings
i’m gunna put more effort into listening promos from people whose name doesn’t immediately mean anything to me. it’s a risky business, but one of the joys of electronic music is hearing something from an unknown then scurrying off to unearth more. one such catalyst has been this ep from us producer deepak sharma on us label hidden recordings. a quick google reveals the man to have once booked craig richards & lee burridge as tyrant – one of my enduring favourites – to play at his brooklyn night a few years ago, and anyone who does that is alright by me, even before they soothe your mind and soul with their dragging deep house.
the track he offers here (alongside dieter krause) is built on a raw, unhurried kick. all important contrast comes from the dry, echoing claps (which cut gorgeously through the bass clouds like, well, thunder) at unexpected intervals; a distant, longing and muted organ line (i think) and some heavy hearted synths. it’s melancholic but optimistic, and has a certain classiness to it which i really dig.
the first reinterpretation operates on a less emotionally intense, but just as deep, plain than the original. throughout, remixer rene breitbarth is content to go at his own speed, with no curveballs, tempo shifts or huge drops to grab at your attention along the way. he doesn’t really want it, what he wants is for you to get lost in the occult and simmering synths which dissipate over the horizon, or the gentle churn of woody clacks which keep you moving, but somehow moving nowhere. this track could go on forever and you wouldn’t really mind, which is skilful stuff.
that dj qu influences seem to hang heavy in the air of ‘wolkenreise’ is only confirmed when he turns up to remix it. it’s a sometimes urgent, sometimes sparse cut which has an intimidating backdrop of faintly shimmering bells fading in and out all the way through. squelchy glitches, indecipherable vocal snippets and alien sounds randomly break through to suggest something nasty lurks behind it, but listening in to find out what is as enjoyable as anything. as well as those, there is also a deep disco-fried effort from gustavo lamas, a reverb heavy, analogue sounding deconstruction by karraskilla and a shiny sci-fi excursion from john tejada, but none sound better than the previous three. hidden recordings, i’m coming looking for you…