MALL GRAB レコード& CD

Review: Over the course of his career to date, Mall Grab has carved a niche as a purveyor of singles and EPs packed to the rafters with full-throttle techno panel beaters, revivalist rave workouts and off-kilter house jams. Given the potential of the long-playing format, you might expect the popular Australian producer to mix things up on his long-awaited debut album. To an extent, he has, supplementing his usual high-octane cuts with forays into immersive and spacey deep house, sun-kissed synth-pop, rap-sporting '90s drum & bass sounds, vocal electro and joyous, piano-powered workouts that tend towards the loved-up and glassy eyed. Even so, there are plenty of hands-aloft future peak-time anthems dotted across the set, as well as weighty sci-fi techno treats and rumbling breakbeat smashers.

Review: Mall Grab's new album showcases the full gamut of the acclaimed producer's sound across 13 hefty new cuts. The Aussie himself says of the album that it is "deeply personal and an exploration of all influences, sounds and sides of the Mall Grab project." He only dropped out of university six years ago but since then has grown into a new school DJ star who has found solace in making music. There is lots of rawness here, energetic techno, powerful house and warehouse-ready dynamite that has become his MO in the many top clubs of the world he so frequently headlines.

Review: Mall Grab's metamorphosis into a big room techno master has accelerated in recent times, with this four-track chunk of hands-in-the-air anthems coming hot on the heels of the similarly tough but uplifting "Take Down Enemies" EP. The star of the show is undoubtedly opener "Positive Energy Forever", a slamming affair that peppers a surging, foreboding techno groove (think Beltram's "Energy Flash", and you're close, with the kind of raw, mind-altering electronic motifs more often found on overblown trance tracks. There's plenty to set the pulse racing elsewhere on the EP though, with the "Brown Album"-era Orbital intensity of "There Is A" and the sweaty, breakbeat-driven, Hoover-bass-propelled madness of "Sheer Fuck-offness" standing out.

Review: Back in March, Jordon Alexander AKA Mall Grab returned to the Looking For Trouble imprint he founded in 2018 with his first missive of the year. Even by his standards, it was a wild, all-action affair, and this follow-up is no less giddy or sweaty. "Take Down Enemies" is a blistering, all-action affair, with Alexander peppering a stomping industrial techno beat with tight acid motifs and cut-up hip-hop vocals. Under the Special Request alias, Paul Woolford offers up a surging, scintillating rework that adds huge dollops of techno-funk to the Australian's slamming original. Elsewhere, "Alarmed" is a more psychedelic and trance-inducing take on Alexander's big room techno template, while "Smash" is a thunderous voyage through body-popping electro nastiness.

Review: The vinyl has finally landed. Released right at the start of 2020 on cassette, 'Share A View' sees Mall Grab taking three tracks from Baltimore hardcore band Turnstile's last album Time & Space and giving them his own remarkable interpretations. As you'd expect from the Looking For Trouble bossman, the vibe is widescreen and far-flung; The driving thrust of 'Generator' is flipped into a twinkling, hazy stumble on 'Yes I Need A Generator', the hooky staccato vocals of 'Real Thing' are woven into a slo-mo dark disco stomp on 'The Real Thing' and the harmonies of 'I Don't Wanna Be Blind' become the soothing yin to Mall Grab's bumping breakbeat yang on 'I Wanna Be Blind'. An exceptional triplet of version excursions. If you're looking for trouble, you've found it.