1. Martelo vs Canblaster – Cannibal
2. Dubbel Dutch – Dead Pool
3. Seiji – Buzzcut
4. Savage Skulls & French Fries – MarawaLean and deadly ruff house rinsers from the motley crew of Martelo vs Canblaster, Dubbel Dutch, Seiji and Savage Skulls & French Fries. There's some dancefloor heat right here, from the doomy crunk meets crooked House flex of 'Cannibal' to the swooping subs and twysted Bubblin' dip of 'Marawa'. The ever-ready Dubbel Dutch unit drives out the teasin' bleep 'n bounce of 'Dead Pool' and the revitalised Seiji goes in all frisky with 'Buzcut' made for those who require some space on the 'floor. Total winners for the Night Slugs lovers and up-to-the-minute ravers!...www.boomkat.com
A1 The Rain
A2 Heavenly Melodies
B1 No Mortgage
B2 VoyageAlso known as Danny Native, Altered Natives had a busier 2010 than just about anybody—and if 2010 is going to be remembered as anything, it will be as a busy year. Dropping a defining album, loads of standalone 12-inches and a clutch of MP3s to SoundCloud, he's a great example of the way that London-centered bass has thrown up not only amazing records and a lively template that musically has benefited a lot of what surrounds it, but also a lot of artists with distinct touches. It can take time to sort them out, but Altered Natives comes on straightaway—especially impressive given that more so than a dense commingling of current bass's various inputs like so many others (think of the crossing referents of Lone, Girl Unit or F), he tends to shuffle between fairly well-defined genres. Mastering the whole for him means mastering the parts.
The No Mortgage EP features four soulful house tracks: two vocal sample numbers on the A, two instrumentals on the B. It's not kaleidoscopic—that's for albums. But it's joyous in a way that's easy to approximate but harder to make seem effortless, ingrained. Take "Heavenly Melodies," featuring a lightly cut-up gospel-choir sample: "I'll think about it," over and over. It's a big revolving backdrop, like in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, and it works perfectly as both a pastiche of early '90s Nu Groove and a starry-eyed right-now track in its own right. "The Rain" radically alters an Ann Peebles vocal sample (taking a gruff woman and turning her to a vulnerable man) over something you could hear DJ Funk want to speed up. "No Mortgage" is sunset piano house with a basic keyboard solo; it sounds like someone's satisfied set-closer. And "Voyage" dusts off some Italo synths with elegant restraint. It's a decent place to start....www.residentadvisor.net
a. Krystal Klear - Green Silver
b. Arethis - Rugged AngelsCooly G's Dub Organizer label flexes some serious vinyl muscle with deadly yet divergent cuts from Krystal Klear and Arethis. Hanging on a Boogie tip, Hoya:Hoya resident and renowned electrofunk master Krystal Klear drops the heat-seeking vibes of 'Greensilver', the kind of scorching soul track we could imagine Foot Patrol controlling the floor to down at the Moss Side leisure centre on a saturday night in '86, only given a lick of subbass and some buffed-up synth gloss for 2010. The vibes quickly get more urgent on the flip with 'Rugged Angel' from North Carolina's Arethis, switching to international future garage mode with a superbly restless 2-stepper built from potent techno stabs and the kind of quicksilver syncopation that takes no prisoners. For rude girl/bad boy DJs only!
01] Telescope Dope
02] Executive Ball Scratcher
03] KlondykeMelodic IDM/Tech-House fusions from Nottingham's Hizatron, a contemporary of Spamchop and the Blunted Robots crew. 'Telescope Dope' operates on the A-side, a hurky-jerky tech-house wiggler with bobbling kicks and surging synthline tricks borrowed from Mnml techno. 'Executive Ball Scratcher' gets a bit groovier, melding twinkling electro-marimba type sounds reminding of Caribou or the Border Community lot, mixed with ruffled Garage House patterns before 'Klondyke' contorts itself into a febrile ball of twitching percussion and discordant, morphing synthlines with a clever arrangement emerging from the chaos...www.boomkat.com
