COMPILATIONSREVIEWS
Various Love Me Plant Music
8.5 Plant life
ALTHOUGH perhaps not as widely known as fellow New Yorkers DFA, Plant Music’s place in the history of Gotham’s dance scene is surely assured. The label’s Lower East Village bar and ‘Sound Of Young New York’ compilations provided a focus for the city’s emerging disco-punk scene in the early ‘00s. Now, 10 years and 70-plus releases on from that genre-defining album, label boss Dominique Keegan has again put his finger in the air to compile the first of a new series of ‘Love Me’ albums. Bringing together some of Plant’s biggest releases from the past 12 months, ‘Love Me’ may set out with
less ambitious intent than its predecessor. However, it still provides a useful snapshot of NY’s club scene, and across the compilation’s 13 tracks we have everything from post-punk disco to ‘90s-tinged vocal cuts and straight-up stripped-back house. Kicking things off with DJ Mehdi’s remix of Eli Escobar’s ‘Love Thing’, its stuttering synths, plaintive vocal and jacking rhythms are a reminder of just how good club music can be when kept simple, and what a hole the Parisian’s passing left us. Elsewhere, Dances With White Girls and Danny Daze both keep up the quality with tracks that tip their hat towards the classic
Chi-Town sounds of Marshall Jefferson and Cajmere respectively. Other notable highlights include Black Van’s smooth synth and vocoder reworking of The Glass’s ‘Four Four Letter’ and Dimitri From Paris’ remix of Clubfeet that turns the Australian band’s dreamy pop into a percussion-heavy disco bomb with more than a hint of The Clash’s ‘Mustapha Dance’ about it. A decade on from Plant’s launch, the sound of New York might not be so young anymore but ‘Love Me’ still provides plenty of reasons to do as the compilation’s title asks us. JOHN POWER
8.5
Luke Solomon Cutting Edge D-Edge Records
Living on D-Edge
Aside from fashioning a long and illustrious career part responsible for Music For Freaks and Classic Recordings, as well as a plethora of room-rocking house stretching back almost 15 years, Luke Solomon has also struck up a cosy relationship with Sao Paulo’s underground den, D-Edge. It’s a fraternity that’s resulted in numerous DJ sets before those iconic Tron-like LED screens, culminating in this studio mix of 14 tracks, strung together with the deft intuition and leftfield nous expected of such a DJs’ DJ. Each track stands up in its own right, but the tallest moments are found in Wadsworth’s didgeridoo thumper ‘Lime & Pink’, the retro bleeps of Kink & Neville Watson’s ‘Metropole’ and Boo Williams’ synapse-whistling ‘Devil Music’. Rounded off with Duckbeats’ truly excellent bottom- ended acid house work-out ‘I Really Do Believe’, ‘Cutting Edge’, like the club that commissioned it, really is a supreme selection. Adam Saville
068
Jaymo & Andy George Moda Black 01 Moda Black
Modas of production
When, back in 2008, we tipped these two rosy-cheeked lads from the North of Englad— with their bass night and new party label, both called Moda — to become two of the most influential minds in dance music, you probably spat your coffee all over these pages. But, judging by the launch of sub label Moda Black (four months ago) and this, the first mix made up of 15 exclusively-produced tracks from the likes of Disclosure, Eats Everything, Mia Dora, Hot Since 82 and Shadow Child, it’s really becoming a reality. Taking things into the smaller, slightly more restrained back room with a concoction of deep house, garage and techno as opposed to bass-beaten big rooms dominated by the outlandish electro-pop sensibility of the zeitgeist, ‘Moda Black 01’ indicates the level of maturity that four years on UK national radio and at the helm of a flagbearing label duly garners. Props! Adam Saville
8.0
7.0
Sterac Secret Life Of Machines Remixes 100% Pure Not so secret anymore
On the back of Sterac aka Steve Rachmad’s recent re-mastering and re-release of his very own classic Detroit techno album, two impressive remix packages are about to touch down to complete ‘The Secret Life Of Machines’ triumvirate for 2012. After 17 years, the seminal album — hailed as placing Europe within the Detroit techno scene, as well as making a name for Rachmad — is being re-invigorated with remixes from some hard-hitters. Part One sees Joel Mull, Heiko Laux, Marc Romboy, Klartraum, Nadja Lind and Samuel L. Session try their hand at re-working various tracks and on Part Two it’s the turn of Ricardo Villalobos, Christian Smith, Vince Watson, Joris Voorn, and 2000 and One. The inimitable freshness of the Detroit sound is maintained throughout but the second part is, overall, stronger. Tip: skip Joris Voorn to indulge in 20 minutes of Villalobos, then straight onto Vince Watson. Emmajo Read
www.djmag.com
Solomun Watergate 11 Watergate Feel the fonk
If there’s one thing that unites all the music that Bosnia-born, Hamburg-based Croatian Mladen Solomun plays, it’s the funk. Though he cut his teeth in the minimal years with steely tech house for his own Diynamic label, Dessous and Four:Twenty, playing much the same sound in his DJ sets, his debut album ‘Dance Baby’ in 2009 represented a sea change. Packed with warm house rhythms, it began his immersion in a more hip-wiggling beat, and since, he’s minted a dark disco rhythm all his own. It’s to this flavour that he dedicates the 11th Watergate
mix.From the boogiefied French hip-hop of Alliance Ethnik’s ‘Respect’ to Lucy Pearl’s ageless R&B/disco bump ‘Don’t Mess With My Man’, to the electro chunk of ‘Endless Street’ by Marseille’s Superfunk, it reconciles his love of tougher dancefloor forms with his first musical sweethearts hip-hop and ’80s boogie. The best for ages in Watergate’s patchy mix series. Seek out. Ben Murphy
8.5
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