Pressure/Pressure Dub - Ability II

When it comes to your Technos, Houses and your Dubsteps, I often judge a tracks quality by just how sick it makes me feel. How it's thudding and squelching, its bumping and grinding brings me back flashbacks of sweaty gyration in dank Berlin cellars or early morning techno-shuffling in fag end carpeted house parties and how those memories make me come out in cold sweats with a balmy brow. A dance track is truly out of this world if the rise and fall of its synth line makes my stomach rise and come crashing back down with a phwop as I remember the bus journey home from a South London club at seven in the morning along with all the office workers in their crisp suits and freshly showered aroma as I melt slowly into my shoe. For years after and to this day, just the mention of London's Whirly Gig club night would make me come out in sweats and my arms start to shake at its memory. That riff from Insomnia by Faithless will always, without fail make my face hot and my eyes glaze, no matter the time of day. It's enough to make me desperately reach for the wholesome jangling of anything by Simon and Garfunkle as a sweet, sweet medicine. 

Pressure by Ability II makes me lunge for the nearest container large enough to hold the rapidly rising contents of my stomach - it's that damn good. Released in 1990, Pressure seems to be the only release from Ability II and the only other information I can find about the producer doesn't bring much excitement - apparently Ability's real name is David Duncan. Fascinating. 

The track itself builds like the best Techno does. New elements clamber into one another until there's a seething mess of grumbling bass, ticking percussion and dissonant vocals. It's quite a slow-burner but brings images of writhing warehouses just getting started at 5am and walls groaning from taking a techno bass pounding. 

It comes along with a Dub version which makes everything all the more sparse and body-warping. I think I prefer the tinkling, never ending synths of the Dub as elements gradually fade and swell in a tide of churning synths and tumultuous percussion.

The reissue from Major Problems has a remix by Luca Lozano that sounds as if it's pumping up the BPM a little, making Pressure into a dance floor killer and making me about as sick as a dog. Vomiting never sounded this good.  

Ability II
Pressure 
Major Problems
12" Vinyl out: 30/01/2017 at Phonica Records  

 

Jump Into - Uffe

One of my favourite albums from 2014 was Max Graef's debut LP, Rivers of The Red Planet. It's one of those albums which hangs together as an entire album incredibly well. It's a full listening experience with different moods and tempos flowing throughout but without it feeling like a playlist or a collection of individual songs which sit together a little disjointedly. It's something that I've always found especially difficult to achieve with electronic music but Graef's mix of jazz and soul samples into deep house and hip hop is infectious and brilliantly done. The concept is great with even the album cover itself really fitting into the feel of the record and helping to bring that concept to life. Check out the full album stream below, it's really fantastic, even for someone, such as myself, who wouldn't describe themselves as a house or "club-music" kind of guy.

 
So when I heard that "the next Max Graef" is due to drop a new album in October, I was excited, if also a little wary. Wary because this new Graef, who goes by the name of Uffe, an electronic producer and DJ from Copenhagen who already has an LP out from 2015, is releasing his next LP through Tartelet, the label that released Graef's LP. That should make me feel at ease as Tartelet are a very solid label, but instead it immediately made me think that it was Uffe's connection to Graef's label rather than to his music that would make him "the next Max Graef", as so often happens with the hypemachine.



I'm still undecided as to whether Jump Into, the debut track from the album No!, makes Uffe into the next Graef or not but ultimately, I don't really want another Graef, the one we've already got is doing a great job. I can certainly see the Graef comparisons; Uffe has created some killer jazzy deep house with many of the same squelching synths and bursting effects as Graef. Jump Into seems more of a bona fide club tune than many of Graef's tracks and has a searing bass that thuds its way through swirling effects for the track's full 7 minutes. The shimmering effects which pop in and out of the track in almost a random manner keep everything super interesting and fresh. The first minute and a half before the vocal breakdown is super cool, like walking through a rainforest at dusk with only the distant croaks of creatures and glisten of stars to be heard. The vocal breakdown is incredibly generic with its echo effect and dull, disconnected voice saying something relatively artsy about music. But Jump Into is a solid track that's brought me back for listen after listen and I for one can't wait to hear more from No! in October.

Uffe
Jump Into
Tartelet
2x Vinyl LP out: 14/10/2016 at Tartelet  

The Capsule's Pride (Bikes) - Bwana

Techno has always been more of a Tech-no thanks for me. I lived in Berlin for six months and you can't escape the stuff. The constant thud emanates from grimy corners of the city at all hours of the day. It's so sobering when you're off on a midday stroll in the sun and come across a dingy, thudding warehouse with the techno crew still raving away from last night. It's even worse being in there. I once arrived at the doors of a club as the sun came up, only to be plunged into deep darkness inside some abandoned building, the only light being the occasional flaring of someone's cigarette or the bright, early morning summer sun bursting through when anyone opened the door, the light flooding in to mock my misfortune before the big warehouse door swung shut again and plunged me back into the continuous beat of the dull techno. What made it worse was how seriously all the Berlin club crew took it. Standing in static rows facing the DJ, doing the "techno-shuffle" from one foot to the other and whistling at the slightest predictable drop or dodgy DJ effect. Techno really is one of the least fun music forms ever. Not what I want at 7am.*

So a techno producer called Bwana based in Berlin has all the hallmarks for me to pass this one by. Even the name Bwana is enough to get on my nerves. But am I glad that I checked this out. 

The Capsule's Pride (Bikes) was originally floating around on the Dark Web through Tor but is now available for free download through a pretty cool website (link below). The whole album is a tribute to the 1988 anime film, Akira. For some reason I've never seen Akira, but I had heard some of the soundtrack and know that it's a bit of something special. Bwana's album is made exclusively from samples of the soundtrack and has so much more mood and emotion in it than the usual techno thud. 

There are many of the usual techno tropes; repetition, ping-ponging beats, deep electro rhythms. But there's so much more going on than that. On the track The Colonel's Mistake, The Scientist's Regret, the beat is a sample of someone saying "Akira" chopped into three bits, A-ki-ra. There's a lot of vocal samples which gives everything more character, makes it interesting, no longer just a cold beat. What's really great is how Bwana uses the traditional Japanese musical sounds from the soundtrack and morphs them into some great techno. This is techno with some soul, something to make you move and, dare I say it, it's really fun.          

Check out the full album in this Youtube playlist  and download the album in full at the pretty cool website made for the album. 

*Despite how it sounds, Berlin is great for a party and I loved it.

Bwana
Capsule's Pride (Bikes)
LuckyMe
Vinyl LP out: 15/07/2016 at Norman Records