[ProgCity Deep Trax]

Generally speaking, I can’t say I’m much a fan of the ProgCity Deep Trax label. The name itself suffers from genre fatigue with a potentially misleading composite of modifiers that typically do not sit well together. How often do you see “prog” and “deep” in the same sentence other than as a nullifying denouncement of one or the other? The music that has typified the label runs a consistent line of tech-house with occasional interjections of clean cut European deep house. And being a sub-label of ProgCity, which championed a gilded house sound through much of the ’90s and early ’00s, doesn’t inspire much confidence in their releases either. Once I put all that aside, though, something caught my ear with Simon Hinter’s Klappsn’ Funk EP.

Hinter’s debut release shows potential by taking a jazzy approach to minimal techno. “Freiluft” employs organic percussion sounds before introducing a spherical bass and juiced up drum programming. Hinter uses piano as a guide, but it’s the mutating bass melody that forms its base layer. On the title track, Hinter takes cues from Cobblestone Jazz’s analog noodling, layering synth/bass modulations and delayed percussion interjected with jazz trampled keyboard snippets. The end result is a jam session-style dance track that never develops a sense of identity, but could prove useful as a mix tool. It’s not until “Snowblind” that Hinter’s promise really comes into view. It starts as a typical example of tech-house, synth chord stabs pulsing and delayed with a familiar cadence, but as a murmured piano line develops it opens the track up to far more salient jazz traits. Loose drum samples inform the 4/4 rhythm swing while xylophone riffs intersect with a moody organ that defines the track with a strong melodic structuring and refreshingly light jazz bent. It’s hard to say where Hinter will go from here but exploring more of where “Snowblind” took him would make future records worthy of investigation.