100% Silk   Page 3

Temples

Earrings II

100% Silk

Portlandia house bastion Ecstasy termed Temples’ 2012 debut mini-LP I-VII “ambient jack,” which captures something of the project’s contradictory strengths: airy yet agile, sparse but plush, flights of intuition mapped onto morphing grids of percussion, crystalline electronics, and pastel skylines. Avalon Kalin’s latest collection of tech finery, Earrings II, dials back the atmospheric quotient somewhat, though there’s still a rock-garden spaciousness to his mixes, each element arranged with regard to some higher harmony, the poetry of negative space.  Recorded in his home studio “while dancing,” the four tracks here flow between passages of pressure and release, euphoric but unstable, dusted with pyramid-chamber slap back and live dubbing acrobatics. Their melting clock asymmetries more closely echo Kalin’s hardware improvisations with Scott Goodwin as Polonaise than the velvet vocal house of his other solo vessel, Finesse, but Temples is ultimately a holy place all its own. A sleekly compelling statement from one of the Pacific Northwest’s secret heroes.

Roche

Stillhope

100% Silk

San Fran synth sensei Ben Winans, a.k.a. Roche, ventures further into his arcane hardware labyrinths on Stillhope, his second slab of mind-wired Pacific house for 100% Silk. As always, there’s a great sense of spaciousness and flow, coastal fog billowing around Alcatraz and over Land’s End, invisible currents taking control. “Stillhope” and “The Medicine” skew more toward the hazed and zen, cliffside smoke seances rendered through samplers and circuitry, percussion patterns ghosting under hidden lunar cycles, while “Change” brings back the bass, riding an acid-funked electric slide into a chorus of street soul chanting. Closer “Theme for Ikaros” leaves the Bay (and Earth) behind, a techno spy theme for hijacking a distant moon base, filtered arpeggios ramping the suspense against a steady stalker’s pulse until it all dissolves in dubby echoes, a stark clap and a sample whispering about “the essence of life.” Even in deepest space, there’s Stillhope.

Strategy

Boxology

100% Silk

The breadth of bass and rhythm imagineerings devised weekly by Portland machinist Paul Dickow is as invigorating as it is overwhelming – some cups run dry and some flow forever apparently. More than a decade in and Strategy's strategies only continue to pinwheel and proliferate, as showcased on his latest capsule collection, Boxology, which swirls through slinky sunrise house ("Panorama," "The Mink"), acid-splashed funktronix ("The Works," "Drag It Through The Garden"), jazzy Detroit shuffles ("A Secret," "Planet Of Jazz"), and airy dancefloor escalators ("Tomorrow May Never Come"). Throughout, Dickow wields a light touch, allowing each concoction to fizz, flow, and ferment before queuing up the next hardware pattern or pitch-bent synth hook. The fact that the bulk of these pieces were road-tested at west coast parties over the last couple years helps explain their fluidity and sneaky footloose agenda. Also worth mentioning/praising: for a dude this deep in the game this is some seriously un-cynical music. Who else writes electro-house jams about their hot dog condiment preferences? NOT ENOUGH. Mastered by Josh "Alter Echo" Derry. Edition of 100.

Prison Garde

Occultsystem

100% Silk

Montreal barber Robert Squire has a lengthy music biz CV as hip-hop producer, remixer, label boss, DJ, graphic designer, and beyond, but the past few years have seen him zeroing in more exclusively on his revolving door hardware operation, Prison Garde, with rawer and more ruthless results. Occultsystem gathers ten of his starkest grey-scale technoid skeletons into a tense suite of paranoiac electronics and faded 5 AM cruises down desolate service roads. Entirely improvised using a TR909, Moog Minitaur, Juno-60, Tetra synthesizer, 3630 Compressor, some pedals, and a mixing desk, Squire's tracks strip rhythms to the bone, leaving them to shiver in a shadow of echo and bass gloom. Close associates like Ango, Ace Decade, and Kevin Eames contribute as well, co-scheming percussion blueprints, modulating FX, and whatever else gets deemed crucial to the particular Prison Garde industrial complex at hand. A bleary, brooding, but banging decagon of jammed signals, hunkered youth, and concrete tunnel visions, decrepit grain elevators flashing past in the window. Edition of 100.

Magic Touch

Palermo House Gang

100% Silk

After three thick years of performances, passport abuse, and pumping, pleasure-principle EPs, Damon Palermo, a.k.a. classic house torchbearer Magic Touch, presents his pinnacle statement to date: Palermo House Gang.  Joining forces with a vast cast of collaborators sourced from his intercontinental travels—Octo Octa, Newbody, Benny Badge, The Horses, Sarah Bates, Sorcerer, Ash Williams—Palermo swings and sweats through funky new wave club mixes, freestyle R&B, mesh-top house, freeform hardware workouts and decadent disco for a sprawling celebration of communal motion and dancefloor idealism. Sustained heavy touring often grizzles musicians into cynical survivalists but it seems to have had the opposite effect on Palermo—these are his most generous, playful and sensual tracks to date. Let go, lighten up, join the Gang.

Octo Octa

Cause I Love You

100% Silk

New England deep house patriot Octo Octa logged some real miles in 2013, flexing his live muscles, refining his crowd-vibe antennae and tracking a trio of fresh EPs to kick off the new year. Cause I Love You is the first—to be followed by 12-inches for Skylax and Argot—and it’s a real shot to the heart.  “Cause I Love You” jacks out of the gate, a jubilant drag race of tumbling percussion, intestinal bass and slipstreaming vocal samples, a true banger to break the moody collective soul mold of Between Two Selves. It’s not all so raring though. Live staple “So Lux” lives up to the title, a creamy, serene slice of stereo software, while “Give” (featuring Raw Moans) coasts on a mesmerizing melody loop, filtered, flowing, and low to the ground. Closer “Mine (Second Chance Mix)” is classic Octo: lens-flared, high-stepping, turned on, turned loose.  Though more of a variety pack than a linearly themed collection, these four cuts show a craftsman hot in the pocket, still picking up steam, alive with ideas.

Golden Donna

II

100% Silk

Madisonian synthesizer omnivore follows the trippy club-crunched double helixes of his recent split 12 on Atlanta's burgeoning CGI imprint with a 7-song skybath of breezy balcony themes, trap-flecked trampoline electronics, pale dream-pitched slow-rides, and diamond-headed aerodynamics for SILK's subliminal magnetic tape division. There's a consistent looking-glass curvature to the way he bends textures and percussion, giving them this lens flare plasticity, like a warped sheen of translucent plastic. Dense but dispersed, II pushes past his debut into higher altitude airspace, towards warmer climes. A uniquely hardwired hanging garden of hibernation strategies from a voracious jammer locked in the lair of midwestern winter. Mastered by Ghost Sounds. Hand-numbered edition of 100.

Beat Detectives

Music 2

100% Silk

Anarchic trash-techno trios from Minneapolis aren't necessarily a plentiful commodity in our experience, especially ones as freewheeling and funked up as Beat Detectives. Comprised of visual artist Aaron Anderson, Chris Hontos (also of Food Pyramid and Dreamweapon), and the multi-talented Oakley Tapola, the group got their start playing a heavily smeared form of rudimentary dance music at "dirt raves in punker basements" around the Twin Cities before Anderson relocated to NYC. Music 2 is the perfect sophomore stepping stone slab, following their Casual Encounters Of The Third Kind debut collection on Moon Glyph earlier this year. Woozy house mutations and pitch-shifted party-acid experiments congeal and dissolve around Tapola's delirious, deadpan vocals (she manages to make lyrics like "American flag / with weed leaves / replacing the stars" sound strange and deranged instead of silly), interspersed with dizzy dub grooves and displaced electro-jack. Reminiscent in places of those weird deep cuts on certain late 80's Warrior Records acid comps, before the style got codified and normalized. Regenerative club mutagen for a world with a stick up its ass. Recorded in Minneapolis and Brooklyn, 2012-2013, and mastered by Cole Weiland.

Fast Times

Bodytalk

100% Silk

Brooklynite Jorge Day's musical CV includes synth duties in Wierd Records mope-pop act Plastic Flowers as well as production for sultry neo-wavers Lingerie, but when left to his own devices he crafts gritty skeletal house sketches under the Fast Times flag. Bodytalk is his debut after a year of workshopping demos and touring Europe, and the results caress a spectrum of SILK sweet-spots: reverbed runway themes ("Mon Petit"), warehouse memory tapes ("Ephemera"), dirty drum machinery ("Eternity Is Past"), naked soul samples ("Toxic City"), luxe lo-fi hypnosis ("Male Polish," "Midnight Vamp"), etc. There's a starkness and crunch to these tracks that skews them more towards the proto-house vibe of various mid-80's analog sides, when productions were more about raw rhythms and melodic minimalism, instead of the prolonged tension-and-release model which dominates to this day. History aside, Fast Times makes background boombox gold, ripe for cranking loud and cutting loose. Expect more from this transporter in the near future. Mastered by Brian Pyle.

Cherushii

Queen Of Cups

100% Silk

Bay Area hardware native Chelsea Faith's vinyl debut as Cherushii – a name she's been recording under since her first teenage techno Tascam experiments more than a decade ago – spills over with loves and lessons gleaned from her lifer voyage through the city's thriving rave underworlds. Although trained as a classical pianist at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music, the rigidity of the culture disillusioned her, so she switched gears and dove headfirst into the Bay's expansive electronic warehouse scene, as both promoter and performer. For her 19th birthday she received a Yamaha RS7000 sequencer, thus birthing an obsession with live PA sets. Recorded mostly in SF (with the exception of one track cut in Berlin), and mixed by Matthew Zipkin, Queen Of Cups uses the blueprint of slow-burn deep house to thread waves of synth wash, acid flash, and strobe glow into a shimmering suite of 21st-century free-spirit sensory motion. Mastered by Eric Hanson. Art & design by Bobby Houlihan.

Draino, Bobby

Brain Drain

100% Silk

Before birthing his blasted acid house identity, Bobby Draino drummed for various synth-punked groups around Vancouver, and some of that scorched-earth live energy bleeds through the five primordial bangers comprising his vinyl debut Brain Drain. Tracked live through one channel of a space echo straight to his computer, Draino’s overdriven drum machines, fried acid grit, bass damage and blown-tone sequencer patterns are fused into a radical and weird debased mutant house. The EP’s five tracks are the culmination of two years of demo workshopping, TR-606 and 303 autodidacticism and warehouse party spelunks—all savvy tactics for developing a shredding, progressively singular style, which Draino has in spades. Brain Drain is one of the most awesomely wrecked and raw Silk slabs to date from a West Coast wiz worth watching.

Les Level

House Of Need

100% Silk

Melbournian multi-hyphenate Luke Brown aka Les Level has logged time in DJ duo Leslie Salvador and dark synth revisionists Negativ Magick but it's his solo work as Les Level that hooked SILK's ear, birthing his vinyl debut, House Of Need. Capped by a complementary pair of mixes of the EP's titular neo-Chicago anthem, the rest of the collection prowls through a spectrum of shuffling, Strictly Rhythmic club cuts, from the 3 AM skyline seducer "Smooth Sailing" to the jazzy, jacking classic "Working Nights." An expert assemblage by a nuanced craftsman with style to burn.

Paradise 100

Loin King

100% Silk

Scotland-born Parisian Paradise 100 (a.k.a. DJ Africa, a.k.a. Graham Peel) has been percolating stripped-back, bouncy-castle house constructs onto the web for a few years but never locked them in wax until now. High time.  Following his minimalist dictum “more than three tracks on a song is just indulgence,” his debut EP’s four cuts share a sleek, spare design, jigsawing slinky bass, classic keys, lean drum programming and flashes of synth mirage into fluid, aerodynamic patterns. Touches of melodic acid and crossover new wave color the mood an exotic, hedonistic hue (further evinced by titles like “The Loin King” and “French Kissing in the House of Love”). His own vision of the project is appropriately fantastical: “The image in my mind is of tropical forests at night, torchlight, distant sounds of tribal ritual dance and ghosts.” Regal music for pleasure domes.

Policy

Postscript

100% Silk

Manhattan filmmaker-turned-beatbroker Francis Hsueh, a.k.a. Policy, has unfolded a skewed yet chic house blueprint across the last three years—as evinced via a trio of EPs for rarefied dancefloor wholesalers such as Rush Hour and Argot—yet his latest may be his most assured and distilled to date.  Postscript plays street dice with choppy electronics and stripped-back groove architectures, maxed out but close to the chest, splashed with off-grid percussive patterns and fractured jazz textures. Policy’s policy of artisanal layering has never been more elegantly executed; metropolis gems like “Postscript 187,” “Ghost in the Groove” and “Big Beast Anthem” swing and stutter, brisk and bouncy, graffitied with smoke-lounge keys, soft pad dub-stabs, synth-flute streaks, burnished brass, city grit.  A uniquely contemplative take on funky uptown house by one of NYC’s rising talents, Postscript comes in an edition of 450 vinyl-only copies.

Booth, James

Reunion

100% Silk

Memory-taper James Booth trickled through his teen years in Manchester tracking melancholia house shadows and overcast bedroom bangers on a home-rigged dictaphone/Tascam arrangement, and though he's since upgraded his studio assemblage the essential agenda remains unchanged. "Reunion" is his debut, documenting ten of his choicest Northern isolation reveries, a Polaroid-hued tube-ride-turned-rhythm-odyssey through 150 shades of grey, from the nocturnal ice-house jazz of "End Tipsy" to the foggy, 5 AM club deja vu, "Seeing Voices." An alternately hushed and hypnotized journey to the end of the night, in search of pleasures known and unknown. Again, please. Pro-dubbed, hand-numbered tapes in new SILK label J-cards. Edition of 100.

Cosby

Hands Together

100% Silk

American bass lifer Will Creason aka Cosby has a storied history in various electronic micro-scenes, with hands in an an array of labels and modes, but he first cropped up on our radar back in early '11 with his "Sangria" demo, an entrancing anthem of sultry, Sound Stream-y nu groove magic that we immediately burned and spun out in several time zones. Inspired equally by NY garage and Baltimore club music, he patiently pieced together the rest of his SILK debut EP from sessions in Seattle and D.C. and the results reveal a colorful cutaway of classic club energies: dubbed vocal workouts, confused house, funky footloose FX, jacking party acid, woozy filtered disco edits, etc. "Hands Together" casts a wide net and is all the better for it, dragging up a fun, freaky mishmash of time-warped dance forms from the bottom of the body-music brain. Inclusive is not a dead word. Pro-dubbed, hand-numbered tapes in new SILK label J-cards. Edition of 100.

Burkat, Alex

Tarot

100% Silk

Prolific Pennsylvanian Alex Burkat has been active in several spheres of house, disco, acid wash, and global rhythm both as DJ and producer but his 100% Silk debut skews more hazed and sensual, to great effect. Swelling loops of new age mist give way to classic Chicago figure-8 bass patterns punctuated by dubby drum fills, before billowing back into breathy warehouse atmospherics. His recent EP for Mister Saturday Night explored higher tempo dynamics but Tarot unwinds with a dreamier deja vu, waves of arpeggiatted echo, strobing stereo shimmer, and low acid warble arcing over a limitless subterranean dance floor. Hypnotic humanist mantric mystery music for the 21st century, for those invested in what the deck has to hold.

Polysick

Under Construction

100% Silk

Visionary Roman hyperrealist Polysick (a.k.a. Egisto Sopor) is one the most inspirationally omnivorous electronic futurists in the biz. From the miasmic sci-fi terrariums of his 2012 opus Digital Native to his scrambled alien radio hijack tape Flow FM to his recent new age metropolis techno-fantasy Daydream, he traverses every sphere with a masterfully warped, expansive and maximalist touch.  Under Construction finds him fracking fresh dancefloor terrains: breezy rooftop acid stretched into animal balloons, degenerated house dubs refracted through ’80s video-arcade ambience, jazzy champagne-spritzed 303-dosed loft funk, screwed Barry White samples echoed across the chill-out lounge. Four instant time-travel crate-dug classics by one of today’s most clued-in constructionists.

Octo Octa

Between Two Selves

100% Silk

Sophistication and elegance have not always been the strobe light honey for die-hard divers into the Dance genre, but it’s been Octo Octa’s strongest suit since his 2011 debut 12” on 100% Silk, and here again are those initial ideas of identity and hunger for intimacy all leading to an adrift, uneasy feeling, only they’ve materialized into that instantly recognizable, authentic OO sound.  Promising was an early word used to describe the thoughtful, dedicated producer (who records in a cramped corner of a kitchen in a cramped corner of Brooklyn), and our anticipations were justified; Between Two Selves has a facile sensuality – the reclining nude of Octo’s Blue Period – with more room to breathe or sigh, and the sort of anthemic samplics handily summed up with a single coaxing call (“I want you,” “I don’t want you to go,” “All his kisses taste sweet”).  Focusing on fewer elements manipulated, pitched and played with over the course of more extended, abstracted compositions, Octo Octa has become one of the prophetic personifiers of regal melancholy in electronic music, along with James Blake and King Midas Sound.  Homoeroticism and homosentimentality, urge and satisfication, celebration and celibacy lay languidly across Between Two Selves, a lofty, soulful statement that Silk is blessed to release on the world. 

Coyote Clean Up

2 Hot 2 Wait

100% Silk

Metro Detroit frisky/risky dreamer DJ Coyote Clean Up serves up a heart n’ hardbody emotional saga with 2 Hot 2 Wait, his deep-debut freaky full-length on 100% Silk.  Hot-under-the-collar horniness (a woman simply counts to three on “Zebra Go Seek” and you start to undress), headphone-house grain (the fuzzy gut-bump on “The Least U Could Feel” is like warm breath whispering in your ear), skrewed RnB Freestyle strip-hop (stuttery layers give hopeful, life-affirming energy to the lover-lost “Awesome Luv”) and out-of-time mash-ups (“Double Dip” is a memory overlapping, with a classic ’95 dial-tone under and over contempo EDM knob-twists) blend blissfully, fashioning a sentimental journey through a sex-love-loss odyssey.  2 Hot 2 Wait is a sensua-stellar standout, beckoning, daring, colorful and celebratory in its exhibitionism and lust.

Pharaohs

Replicant Moods

100% Silk

Not Pharaoh—one guy, one MIDI controller—but Pharaohs, plural: a dance band and magical rarity amid the lorn ’Lesis landscape of solo producers and desktop DJs.  Bunkered between an arrangement of stackable synths, the Pharaohs squad jams workshop-style, an endearing, funky, spirited live-thrive. Replicant Moods is one part airy coastal jazz, that Ibeatha-meets-Madchester baggy style the group melted soles with on their first 12-inch Uhh Uhh, and two parts sci-fi soar into the new age, complete with Philip K. Dick winks, tech-know wonks and sleek Daft Punk-choreographed boogies. A Maria Minerva guest soft spot on the ESG / Weymouth bass bust “Miraculous Feet” lends another sweet shuffle to the clone conga line of Technics tracks.  Replicant Moods is sensual—like a slinky Shakira-bot booty shake—and also considered, a nuanced composition slowly evolving into a compelling layer dip of star-stretching get-down.   PHARAOHS - MIRACULOUS FEET (SILK045) by 100% Silk

Bobby Browser

Still Browsing

100% Silk

House is at home with Bobby Browser, who is Still Browsing after 2012’s Just Browsing EP, but these four tracks feel like he’s finally splurged on the pleasure-purchase.  Never afraid to fuse sad Soul II Soul-isms with flute-floozy Milan model-walk wonders, or blue lipstick, platform dance with classic groove-back ogle-voguing, Browser remains a San Fran late-night-on-Haight-night Latin legend. He’s known for DJing gel-gems like “Bad Bad Boys” and other, mostly forgotten, romantic thrift store singles, and as producer he’s got the same no-boundaries deep-’preciation for all that can be stirred in his stoopid stew. Howard Jones meets Earth, Wind, and Fire meets N’dea Davenport meets Sade meets Frankie Knuckles but not at all straightforward, and nothing short of silky slip-peeling.  Always lovely and light, sleek and chic, Bobby Browser’s bought a spot on your yacht. It’s going to be a smooth cruise.   BOBBY BROWSER - AS FAR AS I KNOW (SILK043) by 100% Silk

Minerva, Maria

Bless

100% Silk

Fresh again, 100% Silk’s favorite dunce-dance diva Maria Minerva tries on a new wardrobe with her Bless EP. Busting out with sweet ’n’ swingy single “Black Magick,” Minerva caters her classic la-la lyrics about an occult / joke-cult romance over a new waif, Schneider-esque pop-Rock Lobsta beat. “Space 4 U” slips echo-drone vocal monologues over a LaFace-style R&B booty bumper, while “Symbol of My Pleasure” sneers with a “Walk This Way” funk lick, both reminding fans of Minerva’s naughty / playful creep-creativities.  Rounding out the EP are “Soul Searchin”—a sleazy, down-tuned, junk-jungle comatose doser—and Lady Blacktronika’s “Black Magick” garage trippin’ remix—a layer cake of luscious tush-pushin’ and an ode to another sassy Lady, Miss Kier herself.  Confidence is key, and this is Minerva struttin’, on and off key, through her newest collection of Wand Songs.

Jupiter Jax

City Life '88

100% Silk

“City Life ‘88” is the hypnotic, melancholic dip-trip, synth-fantasia of Maltese-born producer Rudi Agius aka Jupiter Jax, a daytime computational biologist and nighttime sensational keyboardologist, coding and de-coding his way through London, UK. As a teenager, the studio stud began throwing underground parties in Malta, flying over artists from Crème/Bunker/Clone and reliving the mezmer-magic of early Chicago house and obscure Italo-Disco. Simulations are what he’s best at in the lab and on the board; using different sound styles, the omni-influence, to conjure a nocturnal neon city. Elevated and “out there,” reminiscent of a rawness, slipping into sleekness, hoppin’ around the Hague, analog n’ lost.

Teleseen

Passages

100% Silk

Teleseen’s Producer/Drifter Gabriel Cyr bounces back n’ forth between Rio and NYC, sometimes droppin’ down in Africa and the Caribbean, absorbing Mid-East beat feasts, electro-ragas, Ethiope tropes, and Carnivale Dance Hall into his Blessed-Meets-West multi-culti mash-ups. Teleseen drags the dancefloor to the desert floor, creating these saxxy, sandy, sensual stops around the Midi-map of Ethnography House. A standout in the SILK catalog, as it 69s 808s for swirling global exotic exploration, we call it Bumper Dub for NatGeo trips, sambas for Saharan sunsets, enigmas for your long-ass train trances.

Leech

Tusks

100% Silk

Microscene main man and Kranky konfidante Brian Foote bounced from Chicago to Portland to Los Angeles, first getting into gear and then getting into gear to become Leech, his deconstructed dance ’devour. Known for “just getting it,” Foote was the maker of dreams come true when he played producer for Zola Jesus, LA Vampires and Grouper, but as Leech he takes his levels-devil, diagonal dub, mood-mixin’ wonk wizardry to someplace strange and sideways.  Leech plays a conceptual concert on “Tusks,” sucking sounds from hear and theirs. His is the genre of Chrono Dance, taunting with temporary tempos while foregoing four-on-the-floor for time-traveling beats. This style-sampler approaches acid, teases techno and jumbles jazz; it’s the blip and bloopers reel of Big Dance Ideas, and you will dance—just not comfortably.

Shams

Piano Cloud

100% Silk

The occasionally polarizing performer and producer does much more than just antagonize Brooklyn crowds with his party pranks; he also creates careful and caressing chill-out tracks for escapist addicts, comfort creeps, and hedonistic pleasure-seekers heaven bent to sway around the trance/dance floor.   Better than a classic Café Del Mar compilation, “Piano Cloud” offers the sweet samplings of Balearic ambience mixed with the cheeky love-hangover of a disco-dance-Diana instrumental.  Troublemaker and Bubblebreaker, there’s an effortless effervescence to Shams and his airy, sweet and sprightly continental brunch-house.  Last track “Wasted” stands out as the singular single with it’s incomparable Cardigans-style vocals, channeling the Saints Etienne and Germain, and providing the final lightest touch to an EP full of light touches. 

Magic Touch + Sapphire Slows

Just Wanna Feel

100% Silk

Just Wanna Feel is the pristine pop-house collaboration of blonde disco don Magic Touch and whispery Tokyo wizardress Sapphire Slows. The A side floats bright and breathtaking, like St. Germain on a terrace in the early morning. The B track, “When I See You,” is an even purer piano-house pleasure. The 12” also includes a dark rubik's cubic remix by I:Cube, as well as a fluttering dub by M. Touch himself. A match made in SILK paradise, faraway and forever in my heart. Bi-lingual graphic design by all-seeing eye Bobby Houlihan, plus a full-color insert.

Roche

A Night At The Haç

100% Silk

As Roche, Bay Area Balearic boy Ben Winans designs long nostalgic nights with no sign of morning.  On “A Night at the Haç,” his keys converse the epic dialogue of classic house thematics: high notes begging romantic love; low notes daring physical freedom. Acid alien gears turn “Insider Outsider” into pivotless progression, straight ahead until the record breaks. Side B sees “CG Vision” through a fish-eye lens, all underwater bubbles ’n’ submarine wubbles as the synthy sea swells. Finally, it’s hi-hats off to the FX channel in “Psycho Zombie Dreams,” a tunnel trauma of modulated raunch—seductive, intoxicating and mind-munching. Haç is Boss, now do the work.

Vertical67

Soulmates

100% Silk

Casual R&B swagger, puro-Euro instincts and super studio techneeks are all over Soulmates, Vertical67’s debut 100% Silk cassette caress.  On these seven soul staples, the Berlin beat-maker combines the bass-session styles of a Nigel Rodgers production with warm ’n’ fuzzy, as-the-gear-turns heartbreak house. Soulmates enhances the mood and trances the mind, moves the groovester and satiates the taste-tapper—you won’t know what you’ve been missing until you have it. Get Vertical, baby.

Ezlv

Selfish Beat

100% Silk

EZLV crafts playfully luxurious extended-mix radio hits from the bi-curious, bygone dance-meets-soul era. It’s Soundstream in song form, luscious and light, brought to juicy lime-life with cool-curated club samples, late-’70s horn porn and elegant DJ creationism.  With a certain je ne sais quoi-quoi for the Francophilic party fille and garçon in us all, Selfish Beat is sparkling, shimmering, alluring, uplifting fun. Both members of the French-Canadian duo are mixmaster maestros, ever-cultivating the beauty of nighttime exhibitionism and extravagance. Get a good feeling about this one.

Jmii

Nueva York

100% Silk

Barcelona-to-Berlin boy Jami Bassols, a.k.a. JMII, makes his 100% Silk debut with Nueva York, a loosey-goosey, sensuadelic 5 A.M. den off the Gold Coast of house. These four tracks of emotional transcen-dance serve up super psych bliss-bloops, heavy sighs, textural key clouds, angelic piano ambles and spiritual lift-offs readymade for post-party, religious rave rovers.  Under the moniker Aster, Bassol has released material on Hieroglyphic Being’s Mathematics label, and as JMII he’s created a sort of reincarnation house: dance music for past and future lives, part new age / part gospel, all ambient acid. Ciento por ciento seda!

Sir Stephen

House Of Regalia

100% Silk

N’awlins dah’lin Sir Stephen knows why the Cajun bird sings. The time-trippin’, style-hoppin’ virtual reality fantasy zone that is House of Regalia delivers eight flava profiles to drop on yr tongue, from the Brand New Heavies-inspired “One x One” (featuring N’Dea-diva vocals by Fleur de Lis) to the Cooltempo / rare groove take on New Order of “Dance for Life,” to the Underworld-weary born-and-raised slippy ripper “Get Wet.”  House of Regalia is a lux-layer cake of sister-soul mantras (“I’ll be pushin’ on!”), acid jazz latte lounge breaks, jackin’-the-Black Box piano house holds, thrown shades, fashion plates and dizzy dancefloor dee-lites. This is music for dancers, pure ’n’ sample.

Reinhardt, Jonas

Foam Fangs

100% Silk

***Foam Fangs could be a term used to describe 100% Silk’s preferred take on that too-easily dismissed ’70s dancefloor dementia of disco—the soft bite, love nibble, mirrorball on steady / ready perma-revolve. Jesse Reiner (Jonas Reinhardt’s first mister, alongside past / parttime collaborators like Phil Manley of Trans Am and Damon Palermo of Mi Ami and Magic Touch), who never quite had the Kranky krinkle of his ohm-ambient labelmates, travels head-on, Tomorrowland-style, through long-form cosmic Moroder constellations on his latest EP.  Nothing frothy about it, though there is a bit of the rubbery in Reiner’s bounce-about, cool, funky kraut-disco. Suddenly we’re beaming back to a time when the world looked forward, envisioning a 21st century decked with silver, chrome and neoprene. It’s a sonic space both transparent and shiny; the metallic ding and cold ribbon of data, scrolling through infinite space.  Opener “Foam Fangs” transports us instantly into an ever-expanding universe of sound and light fanning out and folding in on itself at once. Variations on that theme continue as the Jonas journey oscillates through the beat-beyond.

Roland Tings

Milky Way

100% Silk

Like the satisfying first sip of soda water spritz, Roland Tings’s debut EP Milky Way bubbles, barms and beads through your body. Roland Tings is Rohan Newman, a Melbourne producer who, like recent rubies Holy Balm, Forces and Canyons, proves there’s just more and more greatness behind the great and powerful Oz. Melodic acid trips soak in swish-ticky booms, like a rubber ball in space with endless bump and bounce.  Sweet off his Japanese jaunt, speeding things down with Sapphire Slows shows, Newman’s taste is pure effervescence and buoyancy. But he’s got a percussive stickiness as well, a vim / vigor that raps and rips through Trax touch-ups and echo-plexes. Not the nineties but the “none-ties”—no glimmer glam, sampladelic vocal vacations or happy house heartbeats. He ends the creamy Milky Way with a brilliantly wonky theme that springs like a wind-up toy gone loose. Roland Tings, Dings and Zings.

Andy Sangria

Kill The Precedent

100% Silk

Just Black

Can't Put My Finger On It

100% Silk

Octo Octa

Oh Love

100% Silk

***100% Silk begs and pleads for all things OCTO—that eight-sided honest octagon: sweet, sad, shy, hopeful, blissful, light, lifting, longing. Going deeper, swelling higher than his first “Let Me See You” 12”, “Oh Love” unifies crucial human experience with technology, sound, and rhythm in a totality of touching vision. The thesis thrill here: selling dreams that can’t be followed, finding love that can’t be lasting, seeking a future that can’t solve your present. “Oh Love” is honeyed with tender integrity; musings on Dance history merge euphoniously with a wealthy sample bank. OCTO OCTA’s the new search engine; he’s connected and connective, the feeling fish to your computer chips. The dancefloor has been pulled out from under you, now you’re free to float in the “Oh Love” atmosphere—warm and womby, roused and roomy, a tear-jerk body-work. Poise yourself for poignancy. He’s TRYING to break your heart.

La Vampires By Octo Octa

Freedom 2K

100% Silk

***OCTO OCTA adds the melancholy to LA VAMPIRES infinite fadness on Freedom 2K, their reachin’/preachin’ 50/50 collaboration on 100% Silk. Here LaVamps has traded her cheap n’ chic booty-budget grooves for sleek n’ chic haunted house. With lyrical references to Minnie Riperton, Arthur Russell, and Evelyn Champagne King, vocalist AMANDA BROWN reappropriates realms of romance, skewing them into fresh sonic moods. Her wash n’ rinse sing/speak is backed by NICK MALKIN’s keys-like-skippin’-stones, BRITT BROWN’s Tex-Mix dub-bumps, and BRIAN FOOTE’s sense and sexpertise, which are all just spit and shine for Octo Octa’s moonlit piano naïve melodies. Gloss and glow design by aesthetic-elevator BOBBY HOULIHAN, with silver and pink toned drop-of-androgeny photography by ASHLEY ANTHONY, will push your candy buttons. Freedom 2K provides dance-or-be-danced-on anthems for the 21st Century, with a diagonal devotion to our generation’s gay nineties. “We were living in a fantasy”—George Michael, Freedom 90.

Ital / Magic Touch

Magic Touch / Ital

100% Silk

***Groovesome twosome, din-yin and bang-yang, San Fran band of solo brothers, DAMON PALERMO and DANIEL MARTIN MCCORMICK disjoin forces here for a split personality. MAGIC TOUCH and ITAL, respectively, travel the globe separate and together (as the harmoniously, ever-evolving MI AMI), forging a years-long relationship that supercedes the prod of producer’s ego. Like his previous paean “Clubhouse” but with gospel-gush swirl and swoon, Magic Touch’s “Anywhere You Want Me” bursts with soul to squeeze, a slip-disco house hunt for the perfect ease-ster egg. Then, re-envisioned by Ital, “Anywhere” goes satin to satan, perfect paranoia pitch, choir curse, a ‘bot-banger out of darkness into flight. Flip to Ital’s “From A Dream” and find your BPM on a trip-treadmill, jacked, pumped, maxxed Max Headroom seizure samples, with moments of power-pretty sweat-spritz dizziness. The remix from Magic Touch jumps through italo-boogie loops and hoops for a revolution-evolution of hooks and crammies, all dissolving into an interzone afterglow. Compliments to the chefs.