EP Review: You Can Have More Happiness - Greg Sawyer

Given Greg Sawyer's list of commitments - resident DJ and writer for London's GetDownGood, PR and Editorial Manager at record label Defected and contributor to Resident Advisor - it's a wonder this EP even got made. Obviously he did find time however and so we have the pleasure that is his first release for Falk following releases on Kevin Yost's I! Records and Endemic Digital.

You Can Have More Happiness is a deep and contemplative house release made up of three tracks. Opener 'Let Me Sleep' is made from layers of chimes, seductive vocal snippets and warm pads - less forthcoming than the other tracks here it gradually builds to the climatic bridge, where much of the focus on the vocal work comes in before Sawyer drops the bass back into the mix.

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You Can Have More Happiness - Greg Sawyer​

'Can't Stay Alive' is a blues influenced electronic track, full of thick, fuzzy synths, warm bass and a tortured female vocal. It is more immediate than 'Let Me Sleep', the piano that centres in the bridge adding a strong emotional charge.

Final track 'Mine' is similarly bruised although this time it features a male vocal. A pulsing synth line is used to sympathetically frame the vocal to create a minimal and surprisingly delicate track.

You Can Have More Happiness is an apt title - this this is a deep, considered EP. Yet by embracing his dark side Greg Sawyer has made this a great release.

You Can Have More Happiness is released tomorrow on Falk, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link] or visit the Falk Store on Bandcamp.​ Check it out in the Soundcloud player below:

EP Review: The Picture - Tiga

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.

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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.

Album Review: Late Night Tales - Metronomy

​Metronomy's third album, seaside inspired The English Riviera, never quite outshone their second album as far as I'm concerned. The slightly grimy autumnal melancholy of Nights Out felt far more British than the riviera to which the last album harks... That album upon which so many critics slathered patriotic love.

Which is not to say it isn't a good album, just a symptom of press arriving at a party already in full swing. The English Riviera won Joseph Mount and his increasingly band-shaped band a lot of applause. It is little surprise then that the glistening coastal feeling runs through much of their new compilation for Late Night Tales. The Late Night Tales albums tend to exhibit a little incorrigible wildness - an unwillingness to behave that is all too absent here. If they are created for nights of acid and too much cannabis then Metronomy appear to prefer to drink fine wine and enjoy the white powder.

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​Late Night Tales - Metronomy

In other words this is the smoothest Late Night Tales in a while (Music For Pleasure aside, of course), and it comes as something of a relief on that front. Recent entries to the series have been very strong but each album can feel a little dense.

But here Mount opens with Outkast's 'Prototype' - a track that still feels as instantly fresh and clean as the day it came out. It is a shame André 3000 is on semi-permanent sabbatical because just one of his productions feels so staggering on its own. The transition into Tweet's 'Drunk' is perfect - thick and unbelievably slow, like the power got cut from the record player but it somehow just about kept playing. Throw in Sa-Ra Creative Partners' jazz trumpet and clattering percussion on 'Cosmic Ball' and you have quite the album opening.

There are similar clutches of greatness elsewhere too. Alessi Brothers' 'Seabird' is dizzying gold plated-folk, a slightly psychedelic take on Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac. It shouldn't be able to smoothly transition into Autechre's glitch-ridden 'Fold4,Wrap5' and yet somehow it does.

The album closes with a maudlin duo of folk records - Herman Düne's damaged 'Winners Lose' and Cat Power's terrifying 'Werewolf'. It's an end you wouldn't dare stay past even if you could - if your late night party guest is playing heart-stopping blues music then it may be time to make an exit. As a close to Metronomy's mix album though it is pretty much spot on.

Late Night Tales ​by Metronomy is released on Monday, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

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: Believe In Reflecting - Roaming

Believe In Reflecting is the debut release from Roaming, the new collaboration between Christopher Rau and Moomin. Whilst both Rau and Moomin have already released one track together under their own names on Oliver Deutschmann's Futureworld compilation this marks their first proper outing.

There are two original tracks that make up this EP. Opener 'Our Dream Of' is a deep,  breathy track with whispered utterances, snatches of brass and a building electronic bass. It's simple but done well - tight, intimate and well baked.

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Believe In Reflecting - Roaming​

Closing track 'Believe In Reflecting' is less restrained - still warm but with a shimmering, breezy sound coming from the combination of rubber-band baselines and soft keys. Intriguingly it is punctuated with off-time samples of 'Christmas Time Is Here'' from Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The jazzy, soft brushed drum sounds and angelic vocals of Guaraldi's festive masterpiece are so fundamentally ingrained in my annual Christmas experience that hearing them within an upbeat, summer worshipping dance track admittedly throws me for a bit of a loop. Other than that the track is a uplifting and progressively pleasing however and perhaps, if your Christmas isn't as dependent on the proper placement of Charlie's Christmas blues tale as mine, you may not even notice the discord.

Sandwiched between the two original tracks is a remix of 'Believe In Reflecting' by Smallpeople, the owners of label behind the release - Smallville. It loses the Christmas samples, and therefore my conflicted emotions, and yet also loses a little of the charm. It retains the gentle, jazzy keys and builds warmth through a series of ambient chords but it doesn't boast quite the same lazy sun drenched vibe.

Believe In Reflecting is released through Smallville via 12" and MP3 on Monday, stream it below on Soundcloud: