It's been a while since I've checked out a release in the Crosstown Rebels Get Lost series of DJ mixed compilations. This new one, Get Lost VI, mixed by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs first caught my attention through it's somewhat eclectic track listing. It quite wasn't what I expected from TEED producer Orlando Higginbottom and it's the most leftfield release from Damian Lazarus' label in recent memory.
Disc one is a noticeably experimental affair - there are tracks from Gold Panda and LFO for a start. Higginbottom crafts a progressive but upbeat and inclusive mix. Early on a Roman Flugel mix of Valentina's 'Wolves' is a slice of minimal pop - wobbling bass beats and drums snapping whilst spectral vocals are draped across emotive pads. Shortly after Axel Bowman's 'Klinnsmann' is kicking things up a notch whilst continuing to deliver big vocal hooks and tight techno production values.
Matthias Zimmerman's heaving, percussive 'Vicente' is a chaotic envelope of sounds that wrap around the song's rhythms in a style not too far from Gold Panda's own and Dave Aju's 'Anyway' is just about as funky and off the wall as he can be. Both are funky and glorious fun. The first disc ends with the ambient progressive tribal rhythms of 'Bakatribe' by Albinos before Asa-Chung & Junray's absolutely classic 'Hana'. If TEED had just put out this one disc it would be quite the album.
However he didn't, and inevitably the second half of this album just isn't quite as consistent, nor quite as interesting. Yet it bloody tries...
Deutsche Wertarbeit's opener 'Auf Eneglsflugein' is a spectacular choral ambient tech-electro masterpiece which starts soft and ends barking mad - full of synthesised vocals and the skippy techno beats of Underground Resistence's track that follows. A number of retro- techno and garage influenced tracks come along, some hitting the right level of echo and fear, such as 'The Click' by Breach & Dark Sky, but some falling short. The TEED original track 'Lion, The Lion', recorded with Eats Everything, is at turns vicious then light and fluffy but feels like little more than a DJ tool compared to some of the tracks here.
Ame's remix of Tiga highlights the fact that 'Plush' is one of his strongest, most assertive tracks in some time. Future Four's 'Into Orbit' is the sound of a four-year-old hitting every key of a keyboard and every drum-pad at once and somehow creating a monstrously entertaining tune. Things then go a little off the boil with some more conventional bangers from Jamie Jones, Subb-an and Tom Trago and the dull and lifeless 'Time Reveals' by Bernard Badie. Old school piano house influenced track 'Troubled World' from an unknown artist closes things out, the pace of the album ruffled but it's a weird, disconcerting and somewhat brilliant end to the album.
Basically TEED's Get Lost VI is pretty great, but it's also pretty long. Dig deep and hold on.
Get Lost VI is out next week through Crosstown Rebels, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links].
