Straight out the gap 2021 has had less than a stellar start, plague rave djs making arses out of themselves, washed up old house producers going “all vinyl” and being a tit about it, Djs lawyering up against each other (MAYBE) and thats before we even acknowledge the shit show that has been the actual real world in 2021. And with January shaping up to being the longest month on record since the advent of the Gregorian Calendar, what better time to distract you with some late 2020 releases and myself and Shane O’Meara’s latest Feathers Glued To Your Face, Bringing Firepower radio show which focuses on some soulful deep house as we do our best to distract ourselves from The Endless.
Los Hermanos – Another Day (Mother Tongue)
Tom’s EOYL featured the Celebrity BBQ Sauce Band album which I got a hold of this week and it was also one of the best records I heard from 2020, one thing that really struck me about it was that it had a sense of humour about itself, which can’t be said a lot about “dance music” these days. One half of the BBQ band was the Soul Saver himself Gerald Mitchell who also at the very end of 2020 delivered the first Los Hermanos 12″ in 12/13 years, on the estimable Mother Tongue Records. The title track is a departure from the more techno focused material we may associate with the LH handle, this time going in a more soulful deep house direction and with it Gerald has created a subtle masterpiece, built around a powerful vocal recording of, I believe, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who was introduced to Mitchell by his mother when he was a kid. Gentle flickers of guitar and keys bounce off the deep house groove before allowing the vocal to take centre stage in an effective late-song breakdown.
Binary Funk Fusion returns the LH sound to its jazzy techno routes, this production being a collaboration with Bob Rogue in Tokyo before the EP closes with The Billy Love Experience, which sounds to this ears was taken from the Celebrity BBQ Sauce Band sessions. No bad thing. Also, if I come across a better designed and packaged 12″ this year I’ll be surprised.
Patrice Scott – The Uprise (Sistrum Recordings)
The last 4 or 5 years has seen Scott’s sound expand from his original stripped back deep techno to take on more house and jazz influences, and The Uprise continues this on while also seeing Scott move into more down tempo territory with the wonderful title track. Sampling isn’t something I’d normally associate with Scott but here he builds the song around a haunting vocal, that imbues the song with a great weight, giving the song a longing feeling that feels especially prescient right now.
Ghetto Love continues on in a similarly introspective manner, again featuring vocal samples, this time backed up with a percussive house groove and yearning strings. That Vibe closes off the 12″ with lumbering drums and squelching bass that comfortably slots itself into the Detroit beatdown continuum.
Various Artists – 20IN20B (Klakson)
Shifting things up a gear or 20, dutch electro imprint Klakson saw it celebrate 20 years of putting out records at the tail end of 2020 with a series of 3 Various Artists 12″. My pick of the bunch was Vol.2 featuring Sepher, Hadone, Steffi & Stingray and Watching Airplanes.
Sepher’s deceptively light synths are upended with a stabbing bass riff that weaves itself over intense electro rhythms, jerking the listener right into the centre of an imaginary dancefloor. Hadone picks up the pace even more on Futuristic Spell which leavens it’s hectic drums with 90s IDM-influenced melodies, delivering a sort of intense warmth reminiscent of AFX before he got too caught up in himself.
The clanging percussion on Explanatory Power is unmistakably the work of Dj Stingray, here collaborating with label owner Steffi*. It is another insurgent slab of industrialised electro, not for the faint of heart.
Closing out the record is Watching Airplanes with Blue is Dope which has shades of the old London / Rotters Golf Club sound in its growling bass and flat snares. What’s great about the whole record is that with all the older sounds referenced it feels very modern, unlike some electro filling up the airwaves at the moment – none of it sounds like a lesser Stinson production!
*Steffi also dropped the killer Family of Waves 12″ under the Crushed Soul alias on Dark Entries last year, in case you missed it. Some excellent electro / wave / industrial sounds going on, most notably on Gravitational Field.
Cold Colors – Le Part de L’ombre (Femur)
On first hearing this mini-album I found myself thinking of when 80s wave sounds started coming back around again the early 00s, in the outer realms of what would morph into blueeurghclash so it isn’t entirely surprising to discover that some of the music on this release stems back from 2006. Le Part de L’ombre gathers together 4 previously digital only songs made between 2006 and 2012 (I think). Frédérick Barbe, for it is he, trades in those wistful melodies that conjures up memories of figments of your imagination, a life never actually lived. Thus, Memories on a Screen perfectly encapsulate this idea both in title and music. The strings that carry it really are quite the mood when you can’t leave the house or see your friends or do sweet fuck all for however long The Endless goes on. This mood is supplanted with the moodier, sparse electro of After Dark before the record closes on the enveloping hope of Eleven which feels like Neil Tennant is waiting in the wings to sing to us that everything is gonna be ok in the end.
Feathers Glued To Your Face, Bringing Firepower – January
This month’s Feathers centers itself around plenty of deep house that we figured would be a nice reposte to the gloom many of us are feeling right now. Listen back below (TL after the embed)
Jungle Wonz – Time Marches On
Jungle Wonz – The Jungle (3:26 edit)
Aroy Dee – Celsius
Jupiter Jax – CYFI
Tim McConnell – Nova
The Beat Broker – After Dark
Nebraska – Shift
Trinidadian Deep – Sounds of the Rebel
Celebrity BBQ Sauce Band – Girl Won’t Give it Up
Andrés – Chevy Status
O’Flynn – Aloha Ice Jam
CoFlo – Lux
Timeline – Light My Fire
Los Hermanos – Another Day
Lars Bartkuhn – Human
Shaun Escoferry – Into The Blue (4 Hero mix)
Keys of Lynx – Kissed by the Sun
Gene Hunt – Misty Falls
Los Hermanos – Binary Funk Fusion
Juan Atkins – Rebound
Unit Mobius – ##
Paul Johnson – Y’all Stole Them Dances
Stardust – Music Sounds Better With You
Paul Johnson – Soft Spot
Tim Harper – I Feel a Groove
Patrice Scott – The Uprise