COMPILATIONSREVIEWS
8.0
Various Paris Club Music Vol1 ClekClekBoom Boom shake the room
The sound of Paris club music has shifted demonstrably if this first salvo from the capital’s searing-hot ClekClekBoom imprint is to be heeded. You can shove your filtered disco, for a start. Scene linchpins French Fries (who runs the label with Ministre X and The Boo), Manaré and Bambounou all represent on this double-disc, straddling the worlds of electro, the ghetto-tech of Detroit, Chi-Town juke and Miami bass, but given a fiercely modern Gallic twist. Fries’ own ‘Southside’ is mechanical, industrial, but inflated with funk. Manaré’s ‘Riddle’ drops the first 4/4, a dark techno workout, how minimal should be done but rarely is. Meanwhile, Slab’s ‘Chaos In The CBD’ is wonky, unsettling but totally irresistible, and Bambounou’s ‘Night’ nods to the UK’s funky and garage scenes. This is the sound of a scene happening right now. Get in on the ground floor. Ben Arnold
Steffi Panorama Bar 5 Ostgut Ton True school
Steffie Doms (or just Steffi) is one of the underground’s fiercest defenders. The Dutch, Berlin-dwelling DJ/producer has built a rep for her no-sell-out stance, as a resident at Panorama Bar and with great house tunes like ‘Yours’ and ‘Sadness’. Some associate her principally with that genre, but that’s only a fraction of her story. She started out playing mostly electro, techno and electronica, and in the spirit of that eclecticism, she’s mixed this excellent set. Starting ultra-deep with the washy, creeping groove of Redshape’s Palisade alter ego, she morphs into Detroitian vibes with Juju & Jordash’s ‘A Stab In The Dark’, slamming, hard funkin’ disco from DJ Fett Burger’s ‘Disco Tre’, her own raw acid jacker ‘DB011’, Dexter’s dark teeth-grinder ‘Jawada’, and ends on a high with Trevino’s melodic techno bubbler ‘Juan Two Five’. Mixed and sequenced with real style, this is the work of a seasoned club pro. Utterly irresistible. Ben Murphy
Fake Blood Fabric Live 69 Fabric
9.0 True blood
SOMETHINGabout the ‘Fabric Live’ series brings out the best in our DJs. The Fabric hall of fame is regarded as a benchmark; a prospect to step up to, so we often get a mix fresher, more edgy than anything previous. Former Wiseguy/DJ Touché, Fake Blood is the next in a long list of renegades. For an artist courting mainstream recognition as the electro-bass sound he helped define during the mid/late noughties gets tranced up by “EDM” stadium-fillers calling it ‘progressive’, it’s tricky to know what to expect from his contribution to arguably the most prestigious series pioneering strictly underground electronic sounds. The result is a mix that, quite literally, doesn’t fuck about. Launching into the air-horn bassline techno of Special Request (aka Paul Woolford) ‘Lolita’, before ramping it up with Brodinski (‘Hypnotize’), the dark baile funk hype of Rvba (‘Never Shaved’) and Tanka’s rudeboy remix of Drums Of Death
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djmag.com
(‘Transistor Rhythm’), to say the outset of the mix is a statement of intent is, well, an understatement. Dropping an electro classic from Nightmares On Wax (‘Aftermath’) and Sable Sheet’s pseudo US garage cut ‘Painting My Fur’ from 2011 is a reminder Fake Blood is a DJ/producer with considerable heritage, while cuts from Mumbai Science (‘Impact’) and his remix of Wretch 32 (‘Pop?’) are likely to score points among today’s younger noise-loving generation. Names like Happa, Funkystepz and French Fries will win the cool kid vote, and that the silliest, poppiest and ultimately most disappointing moment on the album is a (new) remix of Black Ghosts — the Simian-powered dance group that helped make his Fake Blood moniker — from the man himself, perhaps hints more at the direction of his production than his ability to (still) rock the main room of the UK’s most underground big
club.Lisa Loveday
9.0
Radio Slave Balance 23 Balance Perfect balance
The ‘Balance’ series has always been excellent in that it seems to pull a little extra something out of your favorite DJs and producers rather than ‘just another mix’. Remember Joris Voorn’s technical masterclass and Will Saul’s three-disc encyclopaedia of dance? Well now Rekids boss and deep, dark longsmith Radio Slave offers something similarly exciting. Whilst disc one is solid, focussing as it does on the dancefloor and Matt Edwards’ always deeply entrenched sense of house and techno groove, disc two is the real winner. Featuring plenty of ambient/ hip-hop/broken beat delights from Slum Village and Quiet Village, Theo Parrish and Herbie Hancock, it’s a rare peek into the afterhours mind of a lifelong crate digger that also happens to sound effortlessly thrilling, undulating as it does from lo-fi to cosmic, beatless to badass with consummate ease. Just brill. Kristan J Caryl
8.0
Kode9 Rinse 22 Rinse The Hyperdub boss’s ode to juke
If there’s one thing you can’t accuse Kode9 of being, it’s stuck in a rut. The beats innovator has always championed and jumped across genres and bpms. This shadowy Rinse FM mix (his first in three years) is the fastest way to keep pace with his Hyperdub label’s current sound. There’s a triple dose of grime 2.0 (Champion, Faze Miyake and Terror Danjah) and recent material from mainstays like Burial and DVA. But juke is at its heart: that is, tittering drums, zippy neon synths and a trap rattle that sounds like a creaky door in the wind. Chicago pioneer and recent signing, DJ Rashad, appears eight times, and his frenetic, R&B-laced productions are easily the most exciting on the mix, if not of 2013. Though, considering 9’s appetite for new electronic horizons, it won’t stay that way for long. Kate Hutchinson
8.0
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