Steel City Dance Discs レコード& CD

Review: After first surfacing digitally late last year, Matisa's Steel City Dance Discs label debut finally makes it onto vinyl - and not a moment too soon. Hard to pigeonhole but fiendishly heavy and floor-friendly, the four cuts on offer are rave-igniting workouts that somehow manage to sound both nostalgic and genuinely fresh. For proof, check opener 'Brillatine', where a warped, all-action bassline, fizzing electronics, Orbital-style female vocal snippets, jumpy stabs and pots-and-pans percussion hits cluster around a skittish, warehouse-ready breakbeat. 'Eyeliner' is a slightly more rave-centric chunk of heady breakbeat hardcore revivalism with added M1 organ motifs (and a rap-less accompanying hip-house style tweak from label boss Mall Grab), while 'Lip Plumper' is a muscular, hands-aloft house workout with layered percussion aplenty.

Review: Mall Grab's Steel City Dance Discs label - named after the industrial port in which he grew up - welcomes Nite Fleit for her debut album here. Like the boss's own music, this is high energy, high impact but highly emotive club music that draws on disparate parts of the spectrum. Across 12 intricately produced tracks, there is everything from electro, breaks and techno to acid. The album is in two distinctive halves, each with its own emotional theme. The artist says it's designed to be listened to either "front-to-back or back-to-front, depending on your mood."