Saturday 2 June 2012

Various - Collected Works 6

Some things in life should be approached with extreme caution. Large, snarling Rottweilers. Busy motorway junctions. Females born under the sign of Gemini. Live electrical circuits. And sampling much-loved, well-known pop tunes from the 1980s.

With the latter, you run the risk of a) upsetting fans of the original, who will throw things at you in the street, and/or b) getting dismissed as a crowd-pleasing cheesemonger. So FULL MARKS then to Andre Crom, who manages to successfully dodge both bullets despite making a very familiar Tears For Fears vocal sample the basis of Shout, which opens this latest four-track showcase EP from his OFF Recordings label. "A deep and sleazy bassline monster," is how the hype sheet describes it, and they're not wrong.

Elsewhere on the EP, Must You Be So Mean by Wildcats is a superb jackin' deeper houser topped off with sampled boogie/electrofunk/80s groove-style vocals, Connected from Walker & Royce ups the boogie factor further with sparkling synths they probably had to wear shoulderpads to be able to play and fat, squelchy analogue synth bass, while Jessie Perez's rather oddly-titled Hialeah House Party closes the EP with big (and I mean big!) BOOOOMMMM'ing kicks and an off-kilter looping Korg riff.

Four excellent and (despite the retro influences) very now-sounding cuts – you seriously need to check this one out for yourself.

Out: This week

About: OFF Recordings are based in Berlin (where else?). Find 'em at their website, on Facebook and Soundcloud, and don't forget to check out their podcasts which are pretty much always bang on the money.

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