review

EP Review: Midnight City - Balthazar

in ,

Midnight City - Balthazar​

On this new release through Pulsewith Balthazar creates seperate distinct moods across the four tracks that make up his Midnight City EP.

A taught, swirling pressurised summer house track, 'Midnight City' builds through layers of strumming bass and female vocals to create a fairly straight up but catchy track. It is the loose, echoing feel of the rhythm section that sticks, capturing the hot feeling of the night time urban watershed moment the title references.

'Sons of Guns' is a slower and more foreboding offering - synths pick out melodies that create interference with a slightly labour-intensive bassline whilst the sound of distorted gasps of air punctuate the record, representing the windy deserts of the Westerns that inspire this track. It's a dark and cruel sounding environment, the occasional jangling guitar lines not the kind of thing you expect on a house record.

'Hopefully' is more urban and with a hint of the sleaze of Matthew Dear's gloriously debauched 'You Put A Smell On Me'. It's a thick, chunky track of deep electronic bass and robotic rhythms with a dramatic white noise ghost train peak and it's the tightest track offered up here.

The EP finishes on 'In The Face Of Death', a more ambient track than the others. It's a whirl of clicks and warm pads that builds to a cavernous, hollow sounding bass line that ends the release on a suitably climatic note.

Midnight City is released today through Pulsewith.​

Album Review: The Call - Spitzer

in ,

​

​The Spitzer brothers looking gloomy

Spitzer's album has been some time in the making with two years passing since their debut EP Roller Coaster.

It was time well invested though. Over the years brothers Damien and Matthieu have flirted with styles, moving through alternative rock to remixes of Kylie to, well... This. The Call feels like it borrows elements of the brothers' earlier experiences to create an overall much more enticing proposition. The dark near-gothic post-punk sensibilities combined with dirty clicks and pops and stark minimal in a way very reminiscent of Ivan Smagghe and the original Black Strobe incarnation he featured in.

​​The Call is likened by the promo material to a seventies prog rock record despite its electronic focus due to it's narrative arc and all encompassing diversity. I'm not sure I can read as much into the album's concept as the person trying to shift the units but the variety is certainly present. The record quickly shifts from building techno on 'Marsch', the kind of clanging acidic monster Simian Mobile Disco would make, to the live rhythms and sinister guitars of the cinematic 'Madigan'.

Guest vocals further change up the pace. Vocalist Fab, of Frustration (signed to the Parisian label Born Bad), turns in a rampant and breathless performance on 'Clunker'. It's less "good" than it is alive, messy and grabbing you for your attention but it doesn't totally fall flat either.

Kid A, who collaborated with the duo on their previous EP, provides a stronger contribution on the haunting 'Too Hard To Breathe'. The vocals are delicate and statuesque - like Björk buried in layers of grime, fuzzy bass and syncopated beats.

It's the instrumental work that stays the course and will come back to you though - the thick distortion and subtle Adonis 'No Way Back'-style bass of 'Breaking The Waves' and the shattered reverb and drone of 'Sergen'.

Spitzer have made a compelling and imaginative debut - dark and sparse and yet intricate.

The Call is released through InFiné on 3 September 2012.

EP Review: Trinket - Last Waltz

in ,

Image source: Dalston SuperstoreLast Waltz are trio Geoff Leopard, Mick Rolfe and El.Dee and when they aren't making electronic music they are celebrating it through their Dada parties set in England's North East. Trinket, to be released through the pretty much on fire Future Boogie, is their debut release.

The title track is a free fall through space, warm cosmic rays sweeping past the listener as half-formed refrains of piano echo past and a determined glockenspiels are scattered across the soundscape. And it keeps coming back to the same momentum establishing bass line - at times it drops away, emphasising the tightly wound constructions, but it always comes back.

In contrast 'Ashes' is steady, a drum beat marking the way forward like lights rhythmically illuminating the motorway. Still equally cosmic it also features a deep analogue melodic bass but the vicious toms and hi-hats drenched in reverb steal the show.

London-based Bad Passion provide a remix of 'Trinket' that is more direct. The smattering of percussion and the piano continue to work well but the drum beat feels needlessly harsh and the speed too fast in comparison to Last Waltz's effortless original.

Trinket is out now on vinyl and released on MP3 on 12 August 2012, available from Amazon.co.uk here and here when released respectively [affiliate links].

EP Review: Obstructing The Light - Tom Demac

in ,

It hasn't been long since Tom Demac's last release, a collaboration with up and coming Manchester band Silverclub, was giving me dark and dubby dreams of a hot and humid summer. Here we are with a follow-up, this time on Glass Table.

Given my experience of Demac's production work was previously confined to a collaborative effort I was surprised to hear this release. Silverclub's Duncan Edward Jones is on hand for the title track but there is an apparent pop element to not just that one but two of the tracks that make up the EP.

And so vocals weave in-and-out of themselves in a a swirling melange of melodies on 'Four Leaves Right'. It builds to a storming, sweaty climatic middle-third of fuzzy bass and cried vocals - it is just a slight disappointment that from here Demac seems unsure what to do next, the track hanging around for another three-minutes when it has already reached its peak.

'Obstructing The Light' itself feels woozy, a slow hot druggy trudge that feels like energy being sapped away by the time those vocals from Jones turn up. It's a soundtrack to hazy days of sunshine and losing your way and so whilst it won't feature in many peak time DJ sets it captures a disconcertingly paranoid mood.

Finally 'For The Love Of Grey' applies the same formula to a more focused minimal house structure. The same feeling of sunstroke and unease remains but the vocals are (mostly) absent, leaving a loosely structured cacophony of percussion and disjointed piano chords. Its conflicted feeling transcends the rest of the EP to create the real stand out moment of this release.

Obstructing The Light is released through Glass Table on Monday.