Back catalogue: Minimal/Tech House

Review: There's a fair chance you'll already have heard "Cola", experienced production duo Camelphat's collaboration with vocalist Elderbrook. The original version, with its rumbling bass, atmospheric builds, subtle bassline house influence and "she sips the Coca-Cola" refrain, has become something of an anthem since first appearing on digital download earlier in the year. For this first vinyl release, Defected has packaged the now-familiar original mix with a trio of reworks. The most impressive of these comes from German veteran Mousse T. He brilliantly re-casts the track as a bumpin' chunk of celebratory disco-house complete with thrilling piano riffs and an elastic bassline.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Record slightly warped***


There's a fair chance you'll already have heard "Cola", experienced production duo Camelphat's collaboration with vocalist Elderbrook. The original version, with its rumbling bass, atmospheric builds, subtle bassline house influence and "she sips the Coca-Cola" refrain, has become something of an anthem since first appearing on digital download earlier in the year. For this first vinyl release, Defected has packaged the now-familiar original mix with a trio of reworks. The most impressive of these comes from German veteran Mousse T. He brilliantly re-casts the track as a bumpin' chunk of celebratory disco-house complete with thrilling piano riffs and an elastic bassline.

Review: It's coming home, it's coming home - house music is coming home! A second instalment of the Groove Access: series Chicago Is Home offers us five fresh tracks from the windy city landing in a glorious cavalcade of razor edged snares and hypnotic jack house. Ed Nine & Kid Enigma's 'Bandleaders' opens side one in spectacular fashion with spoken mantras lying deep in the mix, distinctive phasing arpeggios, poking keyboard riffs and ringing cymbals. JSquare's 'Get Wicked' kicks with even more power, tribal rhythms bouncing of bleepy melodies, before 'Move' by Geto Mark rounds off the side with the strutting, beautifully brutal 'Move', a proper 3AM peak time pleaser. Steve Noah's 'The Hater' opens side two, a wily acid line worming its way across a raw, stripped down backing before exploding into serious gnarliness when you least expect it. AFTR's 'Undercover' rounds things off with another knuckle duster of a tune, leaving no doubt that Chicago is still the place to be when it comes to house.

Review: The 110th release from Kompakt Extra comes from Extrawelt, a long-serving electronic band from Hamburg that has previously impressed via albums and singles on Traum Schallplatten, Border Community, Darkroom Dubs and Cocoon Recordings. They naturally hit the ground running with "Pink Panzer", a bustling affair that mixes live drum breakbeats and tough machine percussion with moody, booming bass, creepy strings and evocative, ever-building tech-house electronics. Flipside "Argonaut" is an altogether sleazier and heavier affair full of thrusting, non-stop distorted bass, redlined post-electro drums and all manner of mind-mangling electronic effects. It's effectively the Yang to the A-side's Ying and, like its' predecessor, very good indeed.

Review: Woody McBride's Sounds label continues to dive back in the archives and revive some absolute gold standard techno for modern diggers. This collab effort between McBride (in his DJ ESP guise) and DJ Skull originally came out in 1995, and it still sounds fierce to this day. 'The Drive' is a stripped down tool with all the right chops to tweak out a locked-in raver, but 'G-Rated' is the real gem on the record. In a blistering hailstorm of 303 squelch you get a definitive example of acid techno at its finest. 'The Power' might well find relevance in the present day trance-techno scene thanks to its unsettling leads and relentless forwards thrust.