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Review: Holden The Inheritors
Label: Border Community

The Inheritors is not the kind of Border Community release one might expect. At first, there's hardly a nostalgic melody, much less a steady beat on label boss James Holden's psychedelic sophomore LP, which punctuates the long silence that followed his 2006 debut, The Idiots Are Winning. Compared to the first album, it's tough to get oriented in The Inheritors' swirling, mid-fi stew. It takes him until "Renata"'s fuzzy synth riff to evoke the idealized prettiness most associated with the label—and even the beauty here is of a wilder, murkier kind. But it's worth being patient while listening to the LP. There were hints of something weirder and freer lurking beneath Idiots tracks like "Lumpette" and "Quiet Drumming"—but The Inheritors mostly sounds vast, like the kind of album it would take seven years to make. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 06/17/2013

Review: Natasha Kmeto Crisis
Label: Dropping Gems

While there are plenty of producers who sing and singers who produce music, Natasha Kmeto is rare in that she owns both credits equally. From 2009's 9 onwards, the Portland-based musician has put both her voice and beats on equal footing, presenting herself as a singular package of studio talent and vocal prowess. Crisis, Kmeto's latest full-length, is the most clearly distilled presentation of her talents yet, serving as a slick vehicle for her varied songwriting. Over the LP's ten tracks, Kmeto moves from skittering beats to soul-saturated R&B while managing to maintain a relatively cohesive vision. The result is an album that's both structurally diverse and strangely unified in its aesthetic.
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  • Filed under: review
  • 06/17/2013

Review: Siriusmo Enthusiast
Label: Monkeytown

When the news of Enthusiast, Siriusmo's first full-length release since 2011, arrived, so did the possibility that the record could also be his last. If Monkeytown's cryptic and convoluted press release for the album is to be believed, the Berlin-based producer has decided to end his 18-year career by retiring "with enthusiasm." But whether or not Enthusiast is indeed Siriusmo's swan song, it's nevertheless a solid offering from the Monkeytown mainstay, who manages to pack a multitude of influences and genres—including disco house, jazz, and space-age hip-hop, to name a few—into its 13 tracks. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 06/14/2013

Review: Polysick Under Construction
Label: 100% Silk

Rome's Egisto Sopor is multitalented, making his name as a prolific video artist and a composer of new-age music as TheAwayTeam, in addition to his principal project Polysick. Polysick has so far maintained Sopor's wide-ranging interests, ranging from short, beatless cuts of twisted, hypnagogic synthesizer to more accessible takes on house. As its record label might indicate, Under Construction finds the producer in dancefloor mode, though he manages to inject a decent amount of oddball character into these tracks as well. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 06/14/2013

Review: Close Getting Closer
Label: !K7

Will Saul has been fairly quiet on the production front for the past five years, apart from a smattering of collaborative EPs. One the surface, it might appear that the twin responsibilities of his labels, Simple and Aus, have been taking up all his time. As it turns out, he's been ensconced in his Somerset studio, committing that time to a hugely ambitious collaborative album, Getting Closer, released under the pseudonym CLOSE in an effort to distinguish its sumptuous and often melancholy sound from the more rough-and-ready house he puts out under his own name. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 06/13/2013

Review: Ossie/PhOtOmachine/Palace The Love Below 002
Label: The Love Below

An offshoot of the Berlin/London-based label somethinksounds, and an imprint devised as a home for limited-release edits, The Love Below opened for business earlier in the year with popular young Swiss remixer Cyril Hahn's highly hyped house versions of Solange Knowles and Destiny's Child. This sophomore release finds a diverse trio of artists being reworked by three up-and-coming London house producers. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 06/13/2013

Review: Cromie & Sage Caswell "Vines" b/w "Pyrex"
Label: Peach

The world may not be so familiar with Cromie and Sage Caswell yet, but the pair of producers has managed to acquire some choice names to remix its debut EP. Peach, the label behind "Vines" b/w "Pyrex," is a new venture of Rem Koolhaus, a former design director for XLR8R and the co-founder of New York City's TURRBOTAX® party. The remixers include Detroit's Kyle Hall, San Francisco's Ghosts On Tape, and South Africa's DJ Spoko, and each leaves his imprint on one of the originals, with varying results. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 06/12/2013

Review: Mathew Jonson Her Blurry Pictures
Label: Crosstown Rebels

Proposed alternate title: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Mathew Jonson. No disrespect to the aerodynamic spelling of the producer's name or his trancey leanings intended—it's just that his second LP shows the strain of the DJ's nomadic lifestyle. Her Blurry Pictures is a world-weary and succinct album, one suggesting that Jonson could use a break from his hectic schedule to repair nerves frayed by too many early-morning sets and too much time spent in airports. Ironically, the fatigue has snapped his talents into sharper focus. And it doesn't prevent the Canadian musician—now based in Berlin and, in the off season, Goa—from throwing down his usual brand of club banger. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 06/12/2013

Review: Jimmy Edgar Hot Inside
Label: Ultramajic

Berlin-based Jimmy Edgar probably doesn't need to start his own label, seeing as he has never had a problem finding a home for his individualistic music. A frequent purpose for starting one's own imprint is to release tracks that are too leftfield for labels with agendas and budgets, so one might expect Hot Inside, Ultramajic's maiden release, to be somehow more radical than Edgar's preexisting catalog. Instead, its three pieces represent some of the producer's trackiest, most DJ-friendly material. Read more » 

  • Filed under: review
  • 06/11/2013
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