ep review

EP Review: The Picture - Tiga

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It has been some time since we last heard something fresh from Tiga so it is a double pleasure to see Crosstown Rebels celebrating their 100th release with this new track from our favourite camp Canadian techno enthusiast.

The ​Picture - Tiga

It being on Crosstown Rebels 'The Picture' is unsurprisingly Tiga at his most dance floor focused. A tight barrel of drums, glitchy rhythms and skittering bleeps and beats create a dark atmosphere. It is capped off with Tiga's vocal - drenched in reverb he brings his own personality to a Prince vocal. The track reflects Tiga's love of techno and, well, Prince, though I can't help but miss his more flamboyant side... The vocal here may have started with Prince but little else did.

Accompanying 'The Picture' is Subb-an's remix of one of Tiga's best records, 'Pleasure From The Bass'. Here it is given a similar feel to the A-side - a tense analogue bass line chorus and near-ultrasonic white-noise glitches provide the main foundations and that original killer bass hardly gets a look in. It's a contemporary take on a track that never really aged anyway, but it is a joy to hear it again even if it is the inferior version.

The Picture is a decent release for Crosstown Rebels' centenary, but if only we could have had Tiga at his best - we are a long way from the mechanical fury of 'Burning Down' and it feels like the music world needs a little more of that Tiga these days.

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EP Review / Stream: Glass Cities - Mitch Murder

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​Glass Cities - Mitch Murder

​DhARMA's third release comes hot on the heals of my review of their debut one, Kelly Paven's excellent Alone In The Storm, and they seem to be a little determined to establish some form.

Mitch Murder's Glass Cities is an EP is eighties-inspired instrumental soft-rock and MOR electronics. Listening to this in the same week as Tony Scott's tragic suicide feels more than a little poignant. This whole EP sounds like it could be the soundtrack to Top Gun.

There are plenty of eighties synths then, but it also has the kind of heightened and headstrong emotion you would expect of an eighties Tony Scott movie. Several of the songs are cut through with samples of dialogues from films but it is the music that is largely left to do the talking.

Unusual as it is to hear 80s rock without vocals - the soundtrack is almost as reminiscent of a video game soundtrack as a movie one - but the melodies hold their own. The squealing guitar on 'Best Of The Best' dominates the first half of the track and the synths knock the remaining minutes out of the park. On 'Heading South' the vocal samples and motorbikes create more feeling than a vocal ever could - and anything more would be overkill.

In addition to the five original tracks there are also two remixes - one by Sylvester and the other Nite Sprite - and refreshly both embrace to atmosphere of the originals, sounding like products of the eighties themselves.

Glass Cities is released on 1 September through DhARMA. Stream it below via Soundcloud or pre-order it on Bandcamp:​

EP Review: (Who Knows) Where Love Goes - Last Magpie

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(Who Knows) Where Love Goes - Last Magpie​

(Who Knows) Where Love Goes - Last Magpie​

A lose and open-air funk number that rises its head here on Magpie's '(Who Knows) Where Love Goes'.

Heavy sun beats down on the title track's ambient house but it's the warm garage rhythms that capture the soul and ensure this track lodges itself in your brain. The lofty title track has just enough time to soak in, a tight bassline tapping out the all important melodies and a blissfully intimate bass. Things quickly accelerate following this gentle start however...

'Pilau Rice' quickly slips past, tightly grab the listener and pulling them forward into a sweaty, intimate play on words. As innocent as the lead in may have been this is no time for mere pleasantries, a bumping bass creating a crescendo bodies will struggle to ignore.

For every intense up-beat 'Pilau Rice' hits following track, 'Don't Know Why', embraces a corresponding drop. The pacing may be a little disconcerting when consumed in one sitting but it is difficult not to feel and subsequently embrace the amorous hot embrace played out on the closing two tracks of this release.

'Don't Know Why' is drenched is sweaty reverb and old school house atmosphere - particularly evident on the closing refrain. 'Club Whore' on the other hand is slower to build but bass the close and heavy bass is uncompromising in its approach.

If you have a feel for deep, heavy takes on soulful house and dubstep it is hard to resist this forthcoming release from Last Magpie - it's warm, familiar and sexy.  It is released through Hypercolour on 20 August, check it out on Soundcloud below:

EP Review: Gone Ghost - Hand Plant

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​Following it's launch last month Disco Bloodbath recording released Gone Ghost, its sophomore single, last week on vinyl (the digital release drops on 21 August).

Hand Plant is a collaboration between one half of Disco Bloodbath (Ben Pistor) and one half of Maxxi Soundsystem (Sam Watts) and they aim to capture the spirit of:

Old and new synths, samples, berlin, aircraft, what happens in the early hours, ecstasy pads that make you rush...

A hand plant. In a pot. Of course.

​And to be honest this release pretty much nails it. It's a frigging wonderful rapture of electronic soul and technology - Pistor and Watts are dragging us on a dawn chase and it's an otherworldly experience. Spectral melodies and large synth work sews an analogue rush of endorphins and a injection of squelching acid on the title track.

Shorter but way more vicious, 'Arpy' has a utterly unforgiving rapid fire bass line that initially reminds me (yet again) of Adonis' 'No Way Back' but cosmic synthesisers ​end up carving the record in two. The subsequent crescendo of layered staccato keys and ping-pong (or should that be wiff waif?) rhythms are sure to leave you breathless.

Also featured is a storming acid remix of 'Gone Ghost' by Jamie Blanco​ - think early acid house complete with eighties synth-pop drums and a fair amount of echo. It calls to mind the classic 'Happy House' mix of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Paul Rutherford's 'Get Real' but here the drums feel tougher and here Blanco has combined it with the strongest melodic elements of the original to make something genuinely beautiful that transcends genre.

Check out the full ​version of 'Gone Ghost' in the YouTube player above but also listen to the all too short preview of Jamie Blanco's mix in the player below. It's way too good to pass up. Consider this one of my favourite things so far this year.

Gone Ghost is released through Disco Bloodbath Recordings - the vinyl release is out now and the digital release is due on 21 August.​