Atlas Corporation is a killer techno-house EP from Abdul Raeva. The Duality Tax label seems to have a stellar batting average when it comes to finding talented DJs and producers and releasing material from them.
Made up of Steffan Todorović and Jonas Arro, Abdul Raeva blends house music with both psychedelic and even prog-rock elements to make a scintillating sound. The title track immediately gives you the sense that your normal, everyday life is about to break into an action film sequence at any moment. “Death Race” is an instant body-mover with its thick bass thumps and psychedelic synth chords.
The Andy Garvey remix of “Death Race” starts off the second half of the EP with a spooky intro that builds into something that sounds like a beatboxing robot working in an underground nightclub. I love how the EP ends with a mellower cut – “Guardian of the Vault.” It’s a sultry, almost tropical jam.
It’s one of the better house / techno records I’ve heard this year.
Hailing from Montpellier, Klint brings hard, thumping dance grooves over five solid tracks on his debut, Le Temps. Each track is a bit over five minutes and all of them will drive your house party for almost a half-hour non-stop.
The opening title track alone gets your pulse racing and feet moving. The throb of the electro-bass is addictive. “Adrenochrome” gets into your muscles and mind like its namesake and has you dancing in order to chase away aliens who might be trying to kidnap you (as announced by the slow building space-synths).
“Adversaire” slides into your house like a shadowy figure and then proceeds to thump, bump, and jump-start you with it’s slightly fuzzy bass grooves. “Beta” has these twitchy beats that get under your clothes, then under your skin, and then settle in your hips, legs, and shoulders. Lastly, “Le Un et Deux” pops and percolates like something you’d hear in a Westward-like pleasure dome around 3am.
You could drop this whole thing into a DJ set and everyone would think you’re brilliant, but be sure to give Klint credit.
As if Rochelle Jordan‘s excellent album, Play with the Changes, wasn’t cool enough, now she’s released Play with the Changes Remixed, which is just what the title implies – a full remix of the album by some of the top producers and DJs in today’s music scenes.
&ME‘s remix of “Situation” ups the synth-bass to levels that make you go, “Oh, damn…That’s hot.” DJ Minx turns “Dancing Elephants” into an after-party house jam. Sango somehow turns “Got Em” into a sexier track. KLSH speeds up “Count It” into a playful cut that borders on industrial music. Kaytranada bumps up the funk on “All Along.”
Kingdom softens “Nothing Left,” almost putting us into a happy dream so Machinedrum can wake us with wicked beats and happy thoughts to start our day on the remix of “Lay.” LSDXOXO remixes “Love U Good” into a bit of a dancehall bumper that will have your hips moving. Sinistarr, meanwhile, turns “Next 2 U” into a full-on mid-1990s rave track that is only missing a strobe light and whistles blown by scantily clad, somewhat dehydrated people.
The Things You Say remix of “Already” is sure to fill dance floors just from the bouncy bass and bartender-shaking-a-cocktail percussion. Soul Clap brings in popcorn popper drum and bass on the remix of “Broken Steel.” Byron the Aquarius sends us out on a somewhat trippy vibe with his remix of “Something” at the end of the album.
There isn’t a bad mix on here. You can slip any of these cuts into a DJ set and everyone will love you for it.
Mexico’s ALF CHAMPION and MDHNTR take us on a wild journey through the subconscious with two spellbinding tracks, packed with distorted organic beats and technical wizardry on Midsummer Day’s Nightmare.
The introspective opening track “Gnic Nad” (Drum Version) is filled with wonder and promise, the synth’s overtones opening you out into a world you’ve never seen before. Self reflection and mystery shroud the humming chords while the percussion is precise and insistent, cutting through the reverie.
From the first beat, the tribal drums and meticulous rhythms in “Alaib Do” (Dream Version) grab you by the shoulders and implore you to dance. The trippy, almost demonic voices and the relentlessly pulsing bass lines transport you to a cave in the middle of the Mexican wilderness, your surroundings ever changing and morphing with the music. Stabs of jazz infused chords jolt you to focus just for a second, before squealing synths and relentless percussion pull you back into the trance.
TRACKLIST
1. Gnic Nad (Drum Version) 2. Alaib Do (Dream Version)
Midsummer Day’s Nightmare was released on the 10th of June, mastered by Sam at The Green Door and is distributed digitally on all major platforms by EPM.
Today, Los Angeles-based artist Rochelle Jordan presents the Kaytranada remix of “All Along” from Play With The Changes Remixed, a reimagination of her acclaimed 2021 album Play With The Changes, out this Friday on Young Art Records. “All Along” (Kaytranada Remix) sees the former tourmates joining forces for a sleek reshaping of Jordan’s futuristic sonic landscape. Play With The Changes Remixed doubles down on Jordan’ original thesis: without experimentation, innovation is impossible. Along with Kaytranda, Jordan taps LSDXOXO, Sango, Byron The Aquarius, Soul Clap, and more for the remix album.
Defying categorization to create a project full of slinky, dancefloor-packing burners that channel her U.K. roots, Play With the Changes is reminiscent of Jordan’s childhood nights spent listening to her brother’s 2-step hymns from the other side of the wall. Garnering year-end praise from Billboard, Bandcamp, and more, Play With The Changes presents Jordan as a modern heir in a lineage of powerhouse vocalists with style and imagination. Play With The Changes Remixed precedes Jordan’s upcoming North American tour supporting Channel Tres, which begins September 27th, and includes stops at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, The Fonda Theater in Los Angeles, and more.
rRoxymore – the project of French-born, Berlin-based artist Hermione Frank – announces her new album, Perpetual Now, out November 4th on Smalltown Supersound, and shares its lead single “Fragmented Dreams.” Armed with a disdain for pastiche and a penchant for experimentalism, rRoxymore has spent the last decade expanding the boundaries of what constitutes club music. On Perpetual Now, her sophomore album, she again displays this propensity for pushing the sonic envelope by blurring the lines between the electronic and the organic. Subverting the traditional album format, Perpetual Now is made up of four extended soundscapes, each taking the listener on a journey through tempo, texture and emotional state. Today’s “Fragmented Dreams,” with its pulsating rhythms and fractured melodies, sees the album fleetingly burst into life.
Listen to rRoxymore’s “Fragmented Dreams” Across a steady stream of releases, rRoxymore has continually reinvented her sound, shifting from hypnotic leftfield techno to UK bass mutations, genre-eschewing dub oddities and more. She first emerged on the scene with “Wheel of Fortune,” a ten-minute epic released on Planningtorock’s Human Level label in 2012. She has since put out music regularly, dropping her acclaimed debut album Face To Phase in 2019, and more recently I Wanted More, a four-track EP that veered from downtempo ambience to lush deep house. A daring, unconventional album, Perpetual Now is everything we’ve come to expect and more from one of electronic music’s most unique producers.
Jon Hopkins has revealed a transcendent new collaboration with Brazilian techno producer ANNA, “Deep In The Glowing Heart (Night Version).” The original version of “Deep In The Glowing Heart” is found on Hopkins’ Music For Psychedelic Therapy, released last November on Domino. Talking about the original, Hopkins said there is a feeling that “music can cleanse you, music can guide you through.” Today’s “Night Version” takes you on a very different journey. Evolving over a month-long trans-Atlantic collaborative process, “Deep In The Glowing Heart (Night Version)” feels like an explosive release of energy, inspired by Hopkins’ return to regular DJing this year. With early versions of this track being premiered to huge crowds by both artists at their DJ sets across the world – including ANNA at Coachella and Hopkins at Fabric – “Deep In The Glowing Heart (Night Version)” is now available to hear widely for the first time.
Of the collaboration, Hopkins says: “I first came across ANNA’s music through her track ‘Hidden Beauties’, which I found myself playing in DJ sets all the time and always goes down so well. I then asked her to remix ‘Singularity’ and the results were so amazing I was super keen to work with her again but in a more collaborative way, rather than just handing over stems. We went back and forth a lot and it flowed really well. I love how this one turned out, it’s such a meeting of our two styles.”
ANNA adds: “It is a big honor to be able to create music together with Jon. His music is part of my daily life, part of my meditations, my long walks and contemplative moments. My remix for his track ‘Singularity’ had a huge impact on my career and getting to know Jon better since then, and collaborate on this version of DITGH, it feels like our relationship has come full circle!”
Listen to Jon Hopkins & ANNA’s “Deep In The Glowing Heart (Night Version)” Music For Psychedelic Therapy was Hopkins’ first full-length since the release of sister albums, the GRAMMY-nominated Singularity (2018) and Immunity (2013), and it was a departure in sound from these records; “an album with no beats, not one drum sound, something that is closer to a classical symphony than a dance / electronica record.”
Berlin based producer Estella Boersma announced themselves with a debut on Unknown to the Unknown’s Dance Trax imprint and a string of appearances in the infamous HOR bathroom have followed – including one at Crave Festival – generating a positive stream count thanks to their varied DJing style; floating between techno, bass, breaks, electro and old school rave.
Today Estella shares the first single ‘The Wave’ from thier highly anticipated EP ‘Contact’ forthcoming on UKmainstay Lobster Theremin, due for release October 7th. The EP will feature three other tracks that perfectly exemplify the energy felt front-left at one of their sets.
‘The Wave’ is the most quintessential Estella track on the release – brimming with acid, breakbeats and warehouse rave energy, channeling older XL Recordings-inspired sounds and modern-punk electronic aesthetics.
Toledo’s System Efe has released a killer EP of Detroit techno-inspired music, Carpetania. The title track fills you with slow-burn energy with its swelling synth-bass and perfect electro-beats. It’s like a bowl of steel cut oats served by a robot waitress at a diner that’s playing house music. It prepares you for a lot of dancing to come.
The bass drops on “Primitive,” immediately turning up the heat and your pulse. Put it on your workout playlist and proceed to shred your routine. “Steppe” builds with radar bleeps and simple, somewhat muted beats into an almost frantic track that leaves you a bit breathless.
The EP’s afterparty is the Raul Alvarez “360 Primitive Edit” of the title track, which takes on a slightly dangerous edge with beats and hooks that sound like something that emerges from the futuristic car full of cyborg hitmen from the year 3045 who’ve come to kill you so your ancestors won’t stop them from being created in the first place.
Named after a 1981 Toyota Celica they bought on Craigslist, Brijean‘s lovely new EP, Angelo, is another lush, breezy, dreamy record from the duo that captivates you right away.
The EP starts by asking us “Which Way to the Club?” Just follow the sounds of Brijean’s great bass notes and playful drums, and they’ll take you straight into “Take a Trip” – which is delightfully trippy and bubbly, almost tickling you with its beats. The record was written during the pandemic, with the duo (Brijean Murphy on vocals and percussion, Doug Stuart on production and multiple instruments), like the rest of us, experiencing upheaval and loss. Writing and record Angelo became a way for them to escape the gloom by dreaming about what was and what could come after the pandemic.
“Shy Guy” encourages everyone to dance again, or even for the first time (“Show me how you like to move. I feel something, too.”). Their fun beats certainly help nudge you onto the dance floor. The title track tones down the dream-synths a bit to make room for more house beats. “Ooo La La” has some of the heftiest bass on the record.
The brief, dreamy “Colors” drifts into “Where Do We Go from Here?” – a song that has Murphy contemplating space-time and our place in it. “Caldwell’s Way” has Murphy and Stuart pining for a place they left behind when they moved away from Southern California. You can hear the yearning in Murphy’s voice, but also the conviction that she knows they might the right decision. The EP even closes with a short instrumental called “Nostalgia.”
It’s another winner from Brijean, and a record that will brighten a room.
