First there’s all this scummy business over the review of John Digweed’s Transitions 4 over at RA, and now this. Renaissance’s much anticipated Wild In The Country event has been cancelled at the eleventh hour. Some people will have booked flights from across the world for this party. At least one of my friends needs to be on a 9am Sunday train from Stevenage. Part of me has started imagining this odd scenario where all the potential energy of those flights and trains and car-rides is spent in other ways: the tearing out of hair, the wringing of hands…or maybe just a daytrip to Stevenage.

Lovely though Stevenage may be…I’m thinking no.

This is a complete farce. I’m looking forward to getting my ticket money back. For those less lucky…well, maybe you can show your contempt by burning all your Transitions CDs and posting the pictures on Flickr.

Better, go and see Maurice Fulton DJ in London, or just chill out with some friends, as I’m planning to do, and listen to the fine selection of tunes on The Mole’s RA podcast - as good a soundtrack as you’ll get for a weekend mourning the loss of one of this year’s most ridiculous - apparently TOO ridiculous - lineups.

RA.109: The Mole
01. Terry Callier - Dancing Girl
02. Os Mutantes - Baby
03. Teddy Pendergrass - When Somebody Loves You Back
04. Gap Band - Outstanding
05. Ethel Beatty - I Know You Care
06. The Blackbyrds - Think Twice
07. J Dilla Jay Dee - Don’t Cry
08. Sylvester - I’ve Been Down
09. Donny Hathway - Giving Up
10. The Temptations - I’m A Bachelor
11. Donny Hathway - I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know
12. Marvin Gaye - When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You (Reprise)
12. Genty - Baby Goodnight
13. Noviciat De Soeurs Missionaires De Notre-Dame D’afrique & Four Religious Drummers - Yesu Ka Mkwebaze

Renaissance, you fucking suck.

******

EDIT - such a shame my 100th post had to be given over to bad news like this! However, contingency plans have been made. If anyone in Oxford fancies a rooftop techno soirée on Saturday night then send me an e-mail. We have about 50m squared of 4th-floor rooftop space (more? G help me out here, it’s your flat…), a megabucks hifi (seriously, it’s good) and a lot of beer. Or you could go to Maurice or Wireless (Underworld!) or Fabric or wherever. Just make sure Renaissance don’t stop you from having a fucking great time.

(This is where I’ve been on holiday

It’s a bit difficult writing this post 4 days after the event, but no more difficult than writing it the day after, given my state of mind at the time. We arrived at Fabric at about 12.30am to be met with a huge Fabric First/Guestlist queue. Well, it was Ricardo, but I still remember the m_nus 10th anniversary being a bit better staffed on the door. Nevermind, we made it inside and made a beeline for room 3. This was my friend E’s first night at Fabric, so we thought we’d just up the suspense by making him wait for room 1… Room 3 was rocking to the disco sounds of Pete Herbert, who provided a wonderful start to the evening’s entertainment with some proper dancey grooves and spacey ’swoosh’ noises. Oh, and ‘Happy House‘. Unfortunately a few couples were turning the upstairs part of Room 3 into some sort of amateur frottage club - much as I love Room 3, this was not what I came to Fabric to see.

So we made our way down to Room 2, where Claude VonStroke was just taking to the controls. I don’t know if anyone else agrees with me, but I’m not that keen on Room 2. First off there is too much smoke (yes, E’s friend, there is such a thing as too much smoke…) and the sound is incredibly harsh. Maybe this is just me being head-over-heels in love with Room 1, but the Room 2 sound bashes you round the ears, you can’t hold a normal conversation, the air is sludgey and the high end is almost inconsequential. We made a quick exit in search of the big one, the floppy hair, the crazed grin, the hipshaking, the designer-stubble…the Ricardo.

Going by weekends, it was exactly one year - and I mean, exactly, to the hour - since I last saw Ricardo Villalobos DJ. (This post, incidently, marks my first year’s-worth of blogging). Last time he was a faint figure, seen behind closed lids and heard through ears already tired from the last 6-or-so hours’ of raving. This year, in contrast, I was READY.

He made for one fucking incredible party. I’ve heard reports of him going deep, warped, dark, difficult…Sunday morning saw none of that. Sunday morning saw saxophone, clarinet, congas, handclaps, slap bass, riffing guitars, and oh god oh god the MOTHER of all drum breaks. E made some comment about it being the best 30 seconds of music he’d ever heard. Quite possible. People have no right to play 30-second drum breaks in Fabric at 5am. Maurice Fulton, in my mind, has a compatriot in the fucked-up genius DJing stakes. What a party.

Ricardo stayed on til 7am and we stayed with him. Then Craig Richards came on and started playing some wonderfully loopy minimal, designed to keep us going even longer and plucking the best noises from Room 1’s incredible system. Nowhere else is the sound so loud and clear while also allowing you to hold a conversation at normal volume. I’d hug the speakers if I could reach. I quit just after 8am, came home, had a shower, did some packing and jumped on a coach to Stansted. Three days of sun in the south of France and i’m just about ready to do it all again this weekend at (the now-Björkless) Wild In The Country.

Life at the moment, I would venture to say, is good. Here’s to another year?

Image from hops_76

Here’s a wideranging set from Deetron, whose ‘Let’s Get Over It’ has been mixed by the Dettmann in suitably wonky form. That’ll be out on Music Man in the nearish future, along with remixes from Henrik Schwarz and Llorca - some inadvertent last.fm dashboard-stalking shows that Philip Sherburne’s already got the promo…

This 90 minute-ish set is streamable on play.fm. It goes in all directions but I’m not complaining - there’s a lot to be said for artfully constructed single-journey mixes (see: Donato Dozzy’s incredible RA podcast) but sometimes I just want to hear a lot of hits. I’ve written down the ones I recognise below.

Deetron @ SUNCITY, Dom Im Berg, Graz [AT], 30/04/08
03.52 - 07.10: Mr. G - Sometimes I Cry (Radio Slave’s Panama Garage Remix) [Oproof]
11.13 - 16.00: Equalized - A1 [EQD]
16.00 - 21.00: Henrik Schwarz & Amapondo - I Exist Because Of You (Dixon’s Stripped Down Version) [Innervisions]
27.34 - 30.36: Mlle Caro & Franck Garcia - Dead Souls (Radio Slave Long Distance Kiss remix) [Buzzin' Fly]
30.36 - 33.52: whatever it is, i like it!
33.52 - 37.40: Matthew Styles - We Said Nothing [Diamonds & Pearls]
49.21 - 51.56: Shed - Warped Mind [Ostgut Ton]
57.01 - 62.04: Moodymann - Shades Of Jae [KDJ]
88.01 - 89.56: tobias. - Balance [Ostgut Ton]
89.56 - 93.27: Supermax - Love Machine [Atlantic]

Check out the disco stuff that pops up every now and then. The mix gets a bit bogged down in deep house flimflam in places, but the disco is awesome. I know the opening track really well but have a ridiculous mindblock on it. If anyone can identify it then I can stop vainly straining my already cracked memory.

If you want some smooooth sounds to soothe your aching head from all the Detroit yakking on mnml ssgs, you could do far far worse than their very own ssgs mx05, from Detroit’s Luke Hess. Aaah, my headache is slowly fading.

Finally, I’m off to see Claude VonStroke/Seth Troxler/Ricardo Villalobos at Fabric tonight. Lucky me.

(Finally finally…looks like Raster Noton’s Byetone has been making waves in Radiohead-land…his Plastic Star EP got played out twice in the warm-up to their Tuesday gig in Victoria Park. The set that followed was full of similarly scrunchy electronics - ‘The Gloaming’ etc. - although if I’m honest it was the classics that really got me tingling: ‘Airbag’, ‘The Tourist’, ‘Planet Telex’. Of the new tracks, it must be ‘Reckoner’ that will stick with me the longest.)

I made a fastmoving techy mix with lots of boom-CHA percussion, because I really do like big snares on 2 and 4. There are tracks from a lot of my favourite labels at the moment: Archipel/Kalimari Musique; Cray1 Labworks; Ostgut Ton; Tuning Spork…

It’s big but not clever, an hour or so. Noisy and thuggish.

HELLAH BELLA MIX JUNE ‘08
01. Kate Simko - ‘Toolbeat’ [Archipel]
02. Eric Johnston - ‘I Should Have Listened To Bella’ [Esperanza Digital]
03. Quenum - ‘Secret Soul’ [Toys For Boys]
04. Mathias Kaden - ‘Swahili’ [Freude Am Tanzen]
05. Seph - ‘Ann Tullah’ [Kalimari Musique]
06. Soulrack - ‘Go Hamilton’ [Cray1 Labworks]
07. Quenum & Dachshund - ‘Elasticated Deformation’ [Platzhirsch]
08. Martinez - ‘Blue Line’ [3rd Floor]
09. Matthew Dear - ‘In Unbending’ [Spectral Sound]
10. Akiko Kiyama - ‘Ant’ [District Of Corruption]
11. Heartthrob - ‘Apprentice’ [M_nus]
12. Norman - ‘Stars And Stribes [Tom Clark's Tomorrow Never Knows Mix]‘ [Snork]
13. Marcel Dettmann - ‘Quicksand’ [Ostgut Ton]
14. D’Julz - ‘Alpha [Acid Mix]‘ [Ovum]
15. Ink And Needle - ‘Number One’ [Tattoorec.com]
16. Ben Klock - ‘October’ [Bpitchcontrol]
17. Phil Brökelmann - ‘Black Dog [Dan Drastic Remix]‘ [Curl Curl]
18. Shyza Minelli - ‘Set The Limit’ [Tuning Spork]
19. Domink Eulberg - ‘Kriechender Günsel (Ajuga Reptans)’ [Traum]
20. Norman - ‘Hell Ist Anders’ [Snork]
21. Loudon Kleer - ‘1965 [Edit]‘ [Parallel 125]

Bit dodgy round the Klock track eh. Oh well. Recovers itself afterwards, I reckon. Dominik Eulberg’s Herbarium EP reveals more depth with every listen. How can one track be so rockin’ yet so smooth?

Unsettling developments over at Resident Advisor, where both the Editor-In-Chief (Tami Fenwick) and the Managing Editor (Jeremy Armitage) have resigned after Jeremy’s original review of Digweed’s Transitions 4 was pulled by the site founders. Tami and Jeremy allege that this was due to worries about advertising revenue from the Renaissance label.

This does seem to fundamentally compromise the integrity of the site - how many other reviews have been edited or modified to satisfy the needs of labels/promoters? I wonder. But then again I often wonder, with many review sites and blogs, just how much content can be dictated by receipt of promos, e-mail campaigns from labels, or stipulations from advertisers.

Red has since countered the claims of the editors. Personally I think it’s essential that this ‘dirty laundry’ is aired on the forums if any of us are going to put any value in RA’s future content. All parties need to explain what they think and why, hopefully without it descending into crabbing at each other.

This seems to be a very tricky happening for RA. I hope the founders can persuade us all that their content is still worth something, but most of all I hope that Jeremy and Tami can be persuaded to return to the site, even if their faith in it is understandably shaken at the moment. Jeremy’s writing is always interesting - as is his openness about the workings of the editorial process - and Tami has been very helpful in correspondence. Here’s hoping there’s a satisfactory resolution to this fiasco.

EDIT - Jeremy has since explained his position further in this post and is writing a blog post about this, possibly to be posted at HIAF. Keep an eye out. If anything good comes from this it’ll be a more realistic understanding of the editorial process in online music criticism. I have a feeling that my own image has been a bit rose-tinted up to now.

Deetron’s track title from last year seems to be coming true for me recently. Last weekend I found tobias., Burial and others at a Department of Natural Sciences summer rave. This weekend we walked into a Cambridge fairground only to hear this emanating from a huge, revolting ‘Jumping Frog’ ride:

Colonel Abrams - ‘Trapped’ (last.fm freestream)

Big coincidence, eh, seeing as how this track has been making me get all teary-eyed over the couple of months since I first heard Prosumer’s Beats In Space mix. Hearing Colonel Abrams singing from a grotesque plastic frog pretty much capped an already weird weekend, although that experience was followed quickly by seeing a huge fireworks display upside-down from the top of a 150ft ‘Booster’ (see above).

I also heard Fabric 36 with new ears and met a swan.

Here’s a Chymera mix that my friend G played while we walked around Cambridge (portable speakers = amazing). It’s fucking ace:

Chymera - Heroin Chic Mix, 02/08
01. Subsonic Park - After Dark | Elektrolux [2008]
02. Marc DePulse - Lagoooon (Afrilounge Rmx) | Playmate Music [2007]
03. Abicah Soul Project - Nimba (ASP Original) | Symple Sound [2007]
04. Plasmik - Mindpattern (Afrilounge’s Deep String Mix) | Connaisseur [2008]
05. Corrugated Tunnel - My Machine Code | Nightvision [2008]
06. Ralph Falcon - The Dig | Renaissance [2008]
07. Beroshima - Horizon (Funk D’Void’s Hope Remix) | Soma [2007]
08. Secret Cinema - For My Love | EC Records [2001]
09. Ariel - Otra Vez (Camara Album Mix) | MyDust [2008]
10. Sterac - Rond | Delsin [2008]
11. Sterac - Bot | Delsin [2008]
12. Chymera - Saphiron | NRK [2008]
13. Tons of Tones - Sheherezade | Urban Sound of Amsterdam [1997]
14. Green Velvet - Abduction | Music Man [1999]
15. Parallel 9 - Index | Music Man [2000]
16. Robert Hood - And Then We Planned Our Escape | Music Man [2007]
17. Ada - Fizzmann | Areal [2007]
18. Donnacha Costello - Black Bag Job | Minimise [2007]
19. LoSoul - Open Door | Playhouse [1996]
20. Johnny D - Deja Vu | 8bit [2007]
21. Kevin Saunderson - Til me Meet Again (Carl Craig Remix) | 10 Records [1990]
22. Robert Hood - Memo from Thunder | Peacefrog [2002]
23. Chateau Flight - Baroque | Innervisions [2006]
24. Querida - 3-5-3 | Kanzleramt [2004]
25. Kink, Neville Watson - Inside Out | Hour House Is Your Rush Records [2008]
26. Eamonn Doyle - Come Down On The Music (Los Hermanos Mix) | D1 [2007]
27. Galaxy 2 Galaxy - Transition | Submerge [2003]
28. Pär Grindvik - Continue in my words (Dettmann, Klock remix) | Spectral [2007]
29. Marco Passarani - Nova | Pigna [2008]
30. Burial - Archangel | Hyperdub [2007]

These are the EPs that are sending me LITERALLY INSANE at the moment, to the point where I pull faces like Jaws up there. Absolute blinders, every track on each of them. I don’t think it gets much better than this. Click on the names to hear them in full on myspace.

Prompt - Toucan/Ambee EP [7noise]
Matthew Dear gave a couple of Prompt tracks a spin for his Radio 1 essential mix earlier in the year, and I included ‘Taboom’ off the Elephant EP in my April mix. ‘Toucan’ and ‘Ambee’ are cut from similar cloth, but have that extra little bit of elasticity for your ears. Dirty, dirty sounds and so much fucking space its vertigo-inducing. If I hear ‘Ambee’ in Fabric room one I think my head might explode around about the 3:30 mark. Simplicity like this can be devastating.

Deetron - Let’s Get Over It/Dettmann Remix [Music Man]
The lovely original version was on Deetron’s 2006 album, Twisted, but it looks like it’s getting a re-release along with a warped remix from musicman Marcel Dettmann on the other side. You can hear it at 50 minutes into his ridiculously exciting Berghain 02 mix, making that noise you get when you bash a metal bucket full of water against a drainpipe: CLONNG. Dettmann turning an incredibly funky original to the darkside and scaring the fuck out of everyone? Well I never…

Eric Johnston - I Should Have Listened To Bella EP [Esperanza Digital]
It’s difficult for me to overstate how much Mr. Johnston is exciting me right now. This EP finds him playing Ludo with Cabanne (’Scheeezebord’), Ricardo Villalobos (’Don’t Fuck Me’) and Kate Simko (the title track) while on mushrooms during the terminal 5 fiasco. In other words, seriously out there.

tobias. - I Can’t Fight The Feeling EP [Wagon Repair]
The only problem I have with Peter Chambers’ review on RA is the missing 1/2 mark. I heard the title track on an incredible set of speakers over the weekend and it really did feel like my mind was being slowly ‘unzipped’. I feel like this EP has to stick. I really want it to.

Matthew Styles - Sources EP [Horizontal]
Styles’ We Said Nothing EP has been a big hit with me, not least due to Dettmann boshing (yes G I am now going to be using this regularly) the title track at Faktion ten days ago. ‘Sources’, which came out at the beginning of the year, is more of a prowler. In fact, all of these EPs have something slightly evanescent about them that’s been sending me crazy. I can’t put my finger on it. ‘520′ goes a bit Dial halfway through, which is really unexpected but totally rad.

That’s it really. All these EPs are indispensible as far as I’m concerned. And you can listen to them all for free before buying them - that really is pretty awesome.

(Photo from Jonesor)

Looking back on this weekend is pretty funny. Since living in London I’ve had the world’s greatest DJs - on my doorstep - pretty much every weekend. I could see five or six massive names every 7 days if I had the money. This weekend I decided to take the time off and go and visit a friend on her campus, Silwood near Ascot, about 45 minutes south-west in the calm sun of the Surrey countryside. There would be some kind of ‘music festival’ called “Silfest”, but only local bands and a bit of sitting around with a picnic.

The funny bit? In between smalltime folk, punk and blues bands, the DJ (one of my friend’s lecturers, no less) played: ‘Deserter’, ‘Blind’, ‘When Doves Cry’, ‘It’s My Life’, ‘Hyper-ballad’ etc. And the soundsystem was fantastic.

The funnier bit? It turns out there was a DJ there going to be doing a set at the end-of-fest party in the ‘Manor House’ (see top picture). And it turns out he was a minimal DJ. And it turns out he played things like:

Nôze - ‘Kitchen’
Gabriel Ananda - ‘Trommelstunde’
Tobias. - ‘I Can’t Fight The Feeling’
Jürgen Paape - ‘So Weit Wie Noch Nie’
Melchior Productions Ltd. - ‘Coming Up’
Anja Schneider - ‘Maki’
Ricardo Villalobos - ‘Primer Encuentro Latino-Americano’
Cobblestone Jazz - ‘W’
Mr. White - ‘The Sun Can’t Compare’
Luca Bacchetti - ‘Like A Sadhu’

If you go to a local music festival in the middle of nowhere, hosted by a Department of Ecology and boasting (really fun!) attractions like face painting, water fights and a cake stall, you really don’t expect to hear things like that. It was the greatest hits discoparty mix of our dreams. The security tried to shut it down at about 3.30am (rock n roll!) just as Burial’s ‘Raver’ emerged from the speakers. But they were pacified, and ‘Archangel’ set us all off again. We finally stopped after 5am, as Shackleton’s ‘Blood On Our Hands’ shook the mansion’s floor (seriously, the soundsystem was incredible). The room we were in was a proper oldstyle ballroom, with a huge Orangery off to one side for chilling out in - again, the venue of our dreams. This photo’s from the 2006 festival:

(Photo from Jonesor)

I’m still totally baffled by the whole experience. It’ll probably count as one of the most enjoyable nights of the year - even more so for the total surprise of it all. Big thanks to my friend for inviting me and to the DJs for putting on such an amazing end to the festival, especially the last DJ whose taste so accurately and bewilderingly mirrored our own. Amazing music can be found in the most unusual places.

******

In other news, Kate Simko has four livesets of hers up on her pretty and swirly website from various festivals and performances back in 06/07. They’re really worth a listen - lots of stuff I’d never heard before interspersed with a few of her current releases. Kate’s very very classy, I hope she comes over to the UK some time soon!

Kate Simko - Live @ DEMF, 27/05/07
Kate Simko - Live In Miami, 24/03/07
Kate Simko - Live In Portland, 25/01/07
Kate Simko - Live @ Decibel Festival, Seattle, 16/09/06

(Picture by Ryan Dombal; designer stubble, model’s own)

This was my third time seeing Matthew Dear and his BIG HANDS. Last year’s gig at Field Day was great fun but marred a bit by bad sound - Dear’s ‘pop’ music really doesn’t use the same sounds as most bands, so I think that early on in his live excursions there must have been a lot of baffled soundmen around the place. And although we had an incredible time finally hearing Asa Breed tracks from the man himself, Dear seemed pretty nervous and not that comfortable actually singing. It could also have been that we were periodically shouting ‘We love you Matthew’ and making heart signs at him…or getting a bit enthusiastic with the inappropriate headbanging:

Still, a great show, and he played band versions of ‘Tide’ and ‘Dog Days’ to cap it all off - signs that the BIG HANDS were willing to try new stuff with otherwise laptop-only material. When we saw him supporting Hot Chip in February, he played a shorter set but the sound was much better - ‘Death To Feelers’ actually had a proper low end to it, thudding into us far more potently than anything Hot Chip managed later on in the night. Also, we exchanged words with him across the street, which kind of made my month.

Last night’s gig was at the ICA, an arty oddity on The Mall, hidden away under some of those ridiculously establishment buildings near Trafalgar Square. The crowd seemed pretty knowing, although someone did note a marked lack of black thick-rimmed glasses. The bar was expensive, but we nabbed some free smorgasbord that was lying around (trampish or enterprising? you decide). The room itself was nice and small, with really great lights/smoke and good visibility - very important, I think you’ll agree, for the FACE OF GOD. Dear’s trousers get impossibly skinnier with every new gig, but this time the t-shirt was swapped for a proper shirt and, oh my god, BRACES.

Ah yes this is meant to be about the music… The setlist was pretty similar to the other two gigs: opening with ‘Fleece On Brain’, moving through the upbeat hits like ‘Shy’ and ‘Pom Pom’ (which had a great lead-in) as well as some subtler, darker moments. It seems ‘Death To Feelers’ gets more monolithic with every performance - a combination of touring experience and savvy soundmen meant that the ICA soundsystem was able to handle the bass much better than at Oxford or Field Day, so you could actually HEAR the low-end for the most part. ‘Deserter’ had a beautiful M83-like intro, while Neubauten seemed to be the main reference for a sludgey ‘Will Gravity Win Tonight?’ It was great to hear the band being more relaxed about the material, playing round it and mixing up the atmosphere of the record.

There were less expected outings too: ‘Don’t Go This Way’ turned up early on, and just before the encore there was a track I’d never heard before which was perhaps the most techno of the night. That’s one thing I really like about how the liveshow has developed: the pop’s been preserved but the techno’s definitely been upped. No-one really sounds like him. When he came back to play ‘Tide’ everyone in the crowd seemed to really like the harder edged sound of the earlier material. And the bigband version of ‘Dog Days’ capped it all off.

Matthew Dear - ‘Dog Days’ [last.fm freestream]

With a lot of gigs behind him (and quite a few drinks in him) Dear aka God has become a proper showman and a real singer. I would love to hear a recording of last night’s show, especially for ‘Will Gravity Win Tonight?’ and ‘Death To Feelers’, which sounded transformed from the CD. It’s funny thinking that Dear could probably do a whole night just himself: warm-up DJ as False, performance as himself and then afterparty as Audion. I’m now looking forward to seeing an Audion liveset at Wild In The Country, which looks to have one of the craziest lineups this summer.

I was turned on to the Archipel label through a post by Adriaan Vankeerbergen on his shiny new blog. He flagged up one of their latest projects, Assignment 3: The Sound Of Archipel, a mammoth release of beat/beatless 3-minute tools commissioned from a slew of exciting producers from across the spectrum of minimal and glitch. So far I’ve only listened to the very funky offerings from Kate Simko and Someone Else, but there look to be several interesting goodies to dig up if you’ve got the time/diskspace; other names you might recognise include Frank Bretschneider, label-head Pheek and all-round legend [a]pendics.shuffle, who is apparently recording a ‘heady, classical, pop record’ with Brian McBride of Stars Of The Lid. Sign me up for that one.

I digress. The Assignment 3 page promises that these tools will be the building blocks for a series of ‘Archmixes’, to which you can contribute by e-mailing your completed architecture to music@archipel.cc. I think it’s a great idea and my impression is that it reflects Archipel’s pleasing attitude to label/consumer dynamics. They release a lot of their music for free under Creative Commons licenses - a quick root through their back catalogue turns up free EPs from Kabale Und Liebe, Jesse Somfay and Ryan Crosson - but also maintain the relevance of paying for music in some cases: “Since most of them [DJs] get a salary out of playing the tracks, we’re happy to redistribute the money to our artists that worked very hard.”

Pheek has hit upon a reasonable but open approach to running a label which has brought definite success: the new Coast2Coast mix from Peace Division (out in August) includes two tracks from a recent Archipel release from Sackrai. The Archipel design - from the downloadable sleeves to the charming site itself - is absolutely winning, too.

The music is delightful. I’ve been enjoying Zhao’s Le Passé Rest EP, which builds something really quite intricate from its sparse components. ‘Monochrome’, in particular, rumbles along on a very deep bassline/kick combination that gets extra slap from snare/hihat halfway through - this is more of the dark and dangerous sound I’ve been enjoying recently. ‘Nuages Et Fumées’ could almost be a Fabric 36 outtake, with its phased and tweaked synth line and worrisome claves. Top tracks, and all for free!

Zhao - Le Passé Rest EP

Archipel’s sub-label, Kalimari Musique, also has some great releases to its name - Miss Fitz’s Death Of Cool EP and Seph’s Tar Mun EP are definitely worth your time. The Archipel label has managed to win me over very quickly with its thoughtful and personable approach. Here’s looking forward to that Peace Division mix and more success for Pheek and his team. Have a listen to this:

Archipel Radio (”the best minimal radio of the net”)