Author Archive: Colin Shields

Wouldbenice, Backlash EP

[Vidab Records] Wouldbenice, or if you prefer, Andre Goc, from Berlin, appears for the second time on the year-old Vidab imprint with the three-track “Backlash” 12″. Though it’s still young, Vidab has been making a splash. With a spiritual home at the Golden Gate Club and label nights at Panoramabar, Vidab would seem to earn […]

Bovill/Murmur, Low Pressure/Magnetic

[Meanwhile] Does anyone else feel that really good dub music seems to have something to teach you? The melodies and rhythms play with each other at arm’s length within a wide open space. This always suggests to me that most everything dubsided is more concerned with finding out how the musical pieces interact than with […]

LWE 2Q Reports: Top 5 Singles That Suggest Minimal Isn’t Dead

For our fifth report, LWE correspondent Colin Shields offers his top 5 singles (from the first half of 2008) that suggest minimal isn’t dead, actually. It’s a familiar story: Life seemed so good in 2006. Minimal, a genre that had simmered along in dance since its conception, had hit the mainstream in a big way. […]

Simon Baker, Plastik Remix

[Playhouse] Simon Baker and Todd Terje aren’t the most easily anticipated combination. Baker’s big room tech-house anthem, “Plastik,” walked a fine line last year: it combined accessibility with a certain square-shouldered aggression that made it better than it should have been. Unsurprisingly, Terje ups the funk quotient on his remix, but in remaking “Plastik” he’s […]

Toby Tobias, Space Shuffle

[REKIDS] Londoner Toby Tobias has been getting his disco on for a long time: his edits have been showing up on labels like Bear Funk for years. And Space Shuffle, his debut album, sure feels like the fruition of long and diligent labor. Most of the album is not dance floor material per se, but […]

Function, Anticipation

[Sandwell District] The label Sandwell District has always been a mixed bag. In an RA profile, label keystone Function, (or Dave Sumner of NYC if anonymity’s not your thing), explained that Sandwell release are selected by any of the artists involved. So the aesthetic values put forward can therefore have as much to do with […]

Cassy, Cassy 02

[Cassy] Panorama Bar’s go-to artist Cassy Britton has spent the last few years carving out a totally distinctive sound. 2006’s first installment on her self-titled label had seeds of it and 2007’s “Somelightuntothenight,” probably her breakthrough track, defined it. Cassy’s last release, “A Poem For You,” brought things to a whole new level. For an […]

Kevin Saunderson, History Elevate 4

[KMS] Fans of this website are no doubt aware of the remix series which has seen a host of modern techno and house luminaries breathe fresh life into classic Kevin Saunderson productions on KMS. “History Elevate” has given our ears a few sensational pieces of music, some of which may indeed emerge as classics in […]

Emptyset, Doxa EP

Bristol-based American James Ginzberg has masqueraded as 30Hz for the past few years, producing crowd pleasing breakbeat numbers and putting them out on his Vertical Sound label. Given his involvement in the founding of seminal dubstep label Tectonic, however, his interest in fare less likely to hit number one on Beatport has been there to see for anyone who cared to look. His new project, Emptyset, probes a sound most easily described as Monolake gone to Bristol. The first two EPs, released on the Future Days imprint, have so far failed quite to hit the mark, but nevertheless forged a distinctive tone consisting of sparse and monochromatic minimal informed by the ever ebullient voice of Bristol bass.