BYRON THE AQUARIUS レコード& CD

Review: French label D3 - which when pronounced in French sounds like their word for Detroit - is a decade old and celebrates the milestone with a special three-part EP series. As has always been the case over that 10 year period, the sounds it serves up are deep and housey. This various artists affair kicks off with AsTreJinkins' slow and propulsive 'Terror' before some nice airy and live sounding broken beats from New Digital Fidelity. Moroka picks up the pace with some hi-tek soul that sounds straight from the Motor City and Byron The Aquarius shows off his mastery of the keys again with a dreamy deep cut 'Tua Su Ra'. Nico Lahs shuts down with a heavyweight beatdown in the form of 'It's Spelled BARI.'

Review: Atlanta's leading purveyor of dusty, jazz-flecked deep house pops up on Clone's Jack For Daze offshoot with an expansive mini-album of raw, drum machine-driven workouts that sound like they started life as hardware improvisations (though they may not be). There's plenty of sonic gold to be found amongst the six tracks on show, with our current favourites including the sweat-soaked beat tool 'Kimora (Dub)' - basically jacking drums to get sweaty in the mix - the dubby, squelchy bass-propelled dancefloor psychedelia of 'BLACK (featuring Brandon Banks)', and the ultra-dreamy, late 80s Chicago deep house flex of 'Mr JX 8P'. 'Ancestors', a tougher and darker workout blessed with bags of percussive energy, is also superb.