This year has been a really fun one for me musically as it has seen some of my favorite producers who aren’t known for quantity of releases dropping a boatload of great new jams. Way back in February I wrote about two excellent releases by Marcellus Pittman, both on his Unirythym label. Over DEMF weekend I was lucky enough to get two MORE new Unirhythm releases on white label, one 7” and one 12”. Just in time for fall, the 12” has officially landed.
The record kicks off with “Something Like {A Dream}”, a warm house jam with a nice shuffled rhythm. There are only a few parts through the whole track, and they don’t even really change up all that much. But the lush keys and bassline combine with the vocal snippets to create a smoked out hypnotic late nite head nod vibe.
On the B side, Jamie 3:26’s edit of “There’s Somebody Out There” completes the vinyl release of every track from the Pieces CD album. If you didn’t know about this one, it will definitely do some damage. Twisted acid stomps until a faster arpeggiation takes the energy up up a notch or two. Finally “Breathe Beat” eases things up with another loopy, heavily shuffled deep joint. Synth organ chords are echoed out over drums that include the titular breathing sounds, creating an abstract but welcoming feeling like some of Marcellus’s most celebrated works. The dub echoes go over the top for a nice moment of chaos close to the end of the track, exacerbating the looseness of the rhythms before coming back under control.
With this and the previous two records, 2018 has already been a very productive year for Marcellus. And there’s still another 7” of deep downtempo jams to come! If the 7” drops in the next three months, that would mark the most material from him in one year in quite some time, maybe ever. It’s really nice to see him out on the record shelves again.