Rezenio Kariem may not be a name that rolls of the tongue but the reclusive South African producer is slowly building a name for himself under the RezKar moniker. Until last year his output had mainly arrived by way of little known net labels such as Jon7.net Microlabel and Mixomat Recordings, and he may have languished under the radar if not for a stunning contribution to the Meakusma Rüts 2/3 compilation and a couple releases for Altered Moods Recordings. 2010 will very likely see RezKar’s profile heightened with an upcoming release on Running Back and this Cosmos 12″ (also released as 7-track digital release) already out at of the tail end of last year.
kuri
Santiago Salazar, Your Club Went Hollywood
February 18, 2010 – 11:01 PM
If you have a penchant for dance music, are over 21 and living in any moderately sized US city there is almost no avoiding nightclubs. They serve as the most likely environs to experience a DJ but often times they are venues ill suited for the music. Be it shitty sound systems, poor layouts or staff with attitude to spare, a bad club can ruin a great DJ’s performance, but more importantly they counteract the whole reason for going out in the first place. Santiago Salazar’s debut 12″ for Wallshaker Music takes the modern club owner to task for those very sins and more.
Simon Hinter, Klappsn’ Funk EP
January 27, 2010 – 11:01 PM
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.
Lerosa, Dual Nature
January 21, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Releasing a debut album on a TDK cassette only format limited to just 100 copies seems like a peculiar career move for an ascending electronic artist. And for someone like Lerosa, collaborating with Further for the release is even more puzzling. Since 2005, Lerosa aka Leopoldo Rosa has established himself with a string of critical 12″s that could be declared loosely as house, but have incorporated stylistic markers that span from acid and techno to jazz and electro. Stamped with a quirky identity, Rosa’s productions may nominally fit the deep house billing their often filed under but there’s much more hinting at expression. On the other hand, the newly formed Further label has established itself with digital-only releases that are aimed at progressive house and the trance end of techno audiences. In other words, adding Lerosa to the roster stands out like a sore thumb. But according to Rosa, the release and format was a deliberate move by the label owner to allow for more freedom to the artist, less financial risk by label while still producing a tangible object, which Dual Nature accomplishes.
Vince Watson, A Very Different World
December 3, 2009 – 10:01 PM
A couple months ago Vince Watson posed a question to the Facebook massive wondering if he pressed his upcoming album on vinyl how many would actually fork out the cash to purchase direct from him. The hook being that you would not only be buying a copy of it on vinyl but it would be a personalized version made more special and could include yet to be determined “extras.” This seems to be a growing trend with label owners who realize that in the battle against digital you’ve got to deliver a more satisfying experience to set yourself apart.
Luv.Renaissance, Once Chance Luv
November 26, 2009 – 11:01 PM
It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the majority of LWE’s readers haven’t heard of Altered Moods Recordings. In fact, I only discovered the obscure imprint earlier this year myself. What struck me most was the unassuming and dogged path that label owner, Malcolm Moore, had set off on after starting it in 2004. The focus of Altered Moods has clearly been on developing promising talent and releasing records he truly believes in rather than chasing a quick buck. With 10 releases that reach from deep house to ambient under its belt and no marquee names emblazoned on its record sleeves, you know this is a labor of love.
Tony Lionni, Treat Me Right
November 17, 2009 – 10:01 AM
For Tony Lionni, 2009 seemed like the year he hit on a formula that elevated his stock to new grounds. Which isn’t to say his productions have been formulaic, but what has stuck out in people’s minds has been a pronounced usage of vocal samples that bring a stunning flow to his tracks. The vocal patterns are used in such a way as to bridge the techno/house divide with a remarkable ease. Call it tech-house, house-y techno or what have you, but at the end of the day this is dance floor blue-plate special material that refuses to fit neatly in either camp.
Fabrice Lig & Titonton Duvante, That Connection EP
November 4, 2009 – 10:01 PM
When it comes to artist collaborations, there are some that pique interest and others that positively get mouths watering. For me a Fabrice Lig and Titonton Duvante pairing falls closer to the latter category. Both bring a defined perspective to each project they tackle, usually resulting in something interesting if not down right essential. For Lig, his productions have used Detroit and Chicago as a touchstone for inspiration, focusing on potent melodic themes that guide his techno and house creations into vibrant areas of musicality that can put a collective smile on whole dance floors. His recent Evolutionism album as Soul Designer took that approach in full, yielding salient references to jazz and funk seen through a white European lens. While not as prolific, Duvante’s output has been ripe with genre stretching creativity from day one. His aptly titled “Embryonic” EP melded moody strings with time stretched electro breaks, foreshadowing the broken beat movement by several years. Since then Duvante’s attacked techno from several angles but always with a firm attention to complex rhythm structures and frequently eyebrow-raising explicit song titles.
Hunch, Travel The Earth
October 21, 2009 – 10:01 PM
If you missed out on Hunee’s debut 12″, the “Tour de Force EP,” and judged his output solely on this release you may not fully believe what I am about to tell you: this man is an artist to be reckoned with. Those three tracks of stunning house screamed quality, from the stutter-scat deep house jack of “Rare Silk” to the Jus-Ed-sampling monologue featured on “Cut Down Trees,” they confirmed he had something new to bring to the table. Nothing could be closer to the truth when you look at his recent 12″ under the Hunch moniker for John Daly’s Feel Music imprint. “Travel The Earth” may not be contain the same enviable balance of DJ-ready rhythms and melodic fulfillment, but does reach for a mysterious blend of organic and electronic abstraction.
BBH: Joe Louis, Back To The Beginning
October 14, 2009 – 10:01 AM
When I bought this 12″ back in 1996, I had no reason to believe it was anything other than a release by early Chicago house producer Joe Lewis. He had already released under that surname variation on his own Target label a decade earlier and had accumulated three releases on Relief. What I didn’t know was that Lewis had come into possession of these four tracks by way of a trip to the UK, during which Jaime Read gave him two DATs of music with the understanding they would be handed to Relief on his behalf. The truth of which was never widely recognized, allowing further releases of more of that music on Basement 282 and a retrospective album on Peace Frog years later. I had heard rumors of this fact for several years but never got full confirmation until researching for this review. In addition to a thorough telling of its history on Discogs, Read has made his regrets and frustration known publicly: “I gave Joe Lewis my DATs when I was young and naïve, so there is an expensive lesson learnt. Shame there’s no music journos with any bollocks.” But if you can put this release’s ignominious underbelly aside, there is music contained within that deserves celebrating.