Record Reviews (05/02/23)
Tape_Hiss - A Linear Progression [Darker Than Wax, 2023]
The kind of release that makes me wonder what the hell it is I waste my time on every day, tape_hiss’s latest EP on Darker Than Wax was the first time I’d ever heard of the producer. Everything about it is my sort of thing, most of all the ambiguous mood on each track: they’re upbeat and playful on the surface, but inside there’s an unmistakable melancholy. The title track epitomises this, with upward cadences that speak of optimism without ever quite resolving. ‘Heartbreaking’ makes this tension explicit, wringing its vocal hook for all its worth. I also love how the beats build on a basic electro template into a place somewhere more towards breaks — ‘Glass Voice’ is another good example — but without ever losing the poise synonymous with the best of electro.
For me this music evokes an emotional balance that only comes about through hard-won experience, and that’s what I’m all about trying to access right now when it comes to DJing. Apparently A Linear Progression is a change of direction for tape_hiss, which makes me even more excited to check out his six years of back catalogue, as I am very curious about what brought him to this point today.
Man Power - Blood Money Power [MeMeMe]
MeMeMe and label head Man Power were a staple of my sets in 2022 and they rounded out the year with this uncompromising collection of protest music just as a fresh winter of discontent started to bite. The title track, featuring Glaswegian ‘post-post-post-punk’ band Junto Club and LA’s Club Tularosa, wastes no time setting out its stall with urgent anti-capital vocals, pounding beat and brooding bass. The Nitzer Ebb is strong with this one.
For me it has been the ‘No Talkin Mix’ that gets more play, though, not because it nixes the vocals but because it adds stunning synth harmonies and moody lead lines worthy of Frankie and ‘Relax’. There’s even what sounds like a sample from another classic slowburner, ‘Mammagamma’, in there, and I can see this getting a lot of mileage from DJs inclined towards balearic chug.
Third track ‘The Dogma Of Mill’ is all industrial hammers and noise, before the curious ‘Praxis’ sees us out with what sounds like an 80s b-boy cover of ‘Heart Of Glass’. The resemblance surely can’t be coincidental and it makes me smile to think of Man Power in the studio cooking this one up, vocoders and DJ scratches and all.
Cristian Sarde - Liquid Sword EP [Pager]
Although I have used my label Welt Discos to put out some music that broadly fits in with what you might call the long tail of Limousine Dream School-Of-202X tech house, I rarely make the effort to listen to the records from its wider ecosystem that periodically pop up on my social media feeds. The reluctance to engage is part of a broader cynicism I’ve developed around this contemporary sound: clean, over-tooled, occasionally musically competent but often absolutely not, and at worst sounding simply manipulative, devoid of the charm or humour that actually makes the old records they’re emulating so compelling.
All of this by way of prefacing the fact that I absolutely love the title track on this EP from Turin producer Cristian Sarde on Frankfurt label Pager, even though it absolutely presses all of those buttons in the most manipulative ways possible. “Computer” says the female voice as the track gets underway, and it’s almost as if it’s an algorithm deciding what comes next in the arrangement, so perfectly and predictably does it unfold. And I lap it up. A Master C & J bassline, a Pal Joey clap/snap, a dash of satisfyingly off-key vocodered disco vox, acid squiggles and then, finally, the glue to hold it all together: classic modulated deep house pads that say “you’re on a boat now”.
An almost 90-second break in the middle of the track tells me Sarde has patience and restraint, another thing sorely lacking in a lot of other records. Say it with me one more time: “Computer!”