Tags: Tech House

Review: Gideon Jackson and Eddie Richards are bona fide tech house titans who have more than helped to shape the genre since day dot and the All Rise EP sees three of their finer past glories gathered together and remastered and pressed on lovely red wax. The excellent 'Biscuit Barrel Blues' opens with exactly the sort of compelling drum work you would expect and it is imbued with some prying synths and sultry vocals. There is an irresistible glitch and dryness to 'Pull Tab 2 Open' and its smeared pads that make it perfect body music then 'Crying' (Gideon Jackson remix) brings a more heavy tech house sound with extra dub weight. Perfection.

Review: A genuine UK acid house, techno and tech-house pioneer, 'Evil' Eddie Richards boasts a catalogue rich in rare, hard-to-find and overlooked gems. The ever on-point Repeat Records, who previously offered collections of rarities by Terry Farley, Jay Tripwire and others, have spotted this - hence this first instalment of what they promise will be a series of Richards retrospectives. There's much to enjoy within the eight tracks stretched across two slabs of wax, from the rolling, deep house influenced early tech-house excellence of 'Joetwo' and the bouncy brilliance of 'Open The Red Door', to the spacey smoothness of 'Old Klang Road', the immersive early morning hypnotism of 'Heat' and the head-nodding downtempo excellence of closing cut 'Madness'.

Review: Repeat Records are currently embarking on a multi-part series of longtime DJ Eddie Richards' earliest tracks, and this second journey - that's right - follows up the first waxen time capsule to appear so far. Richards' behind-the-booth adventurousness is often credited as one of the instrumental factors in the spread of house music in the UK, and doesn't 'Time Travel' show it. Lesser known as a producer but still much respected in said niche, several choice slab-grooves from Richards' early noughts numbers are selected here: track two from 2002's 'The Dark' EP, 'Underskopje' from that same year's Kubrickian tech house hurler 'Open The Pod Door' EP, and a legitly deep cut from the AA2 side of Richards' Othersound debut 'Dope'. One for early tech house heads, when the genre was still innocent and real experts reigned supreme.

Review: One of the "Godfathers of UK tech house" (there are many contenders for this unofficial crown), Eddie Richards began the Time Travel series to reposition this snappy sound in its most modern form. Ironically, this means travelling back in time, then revisiting the present with older, better tools. Tech house was born in London, and yet in terms of popularity and influence, it has transmigrated to the furthest-flung regions of Europe and Asia in quicktime. How can we possibly reintegrate its original sound, let alone refind it? A veteran of the unstoppable waterwheel that was Camden Palace, Richards makes as honest an attempt as you can hope for. He doesn't bother with track-titular profundity, instead embracing names like 'Dream2', 'Moody' and 'Eightone8', suggesting tech house, despite the "tech", should be an off-the-cuff sound, one not chiselled and burnished to perfection. 'Danger' and 'Tease' are proper blemished tech house mother-genes, while for the 'Love Is (Dub)' crosses into u-chambered dubtech territory, with a bespoke, rebarred hi-hat to boot.

Review: Eddie Richards' vaults are surely some of the best there can be for tech house heads. The Brit was there on the ground, helping to shape the earliest incarnations of the newly emerging genre back in the 90s and early 00s and few have bettered it since. Proof comes from this reissue of a pair of remastered beauties on new label likethis. 'Destiny' has never before been on wax and is a silky, synth-laced sound with crisp drum funk and then the B-side jam 'The Soul' is a dusty and stripped-back mix of drums, hits, swirling pads and irresistibly loopy grooves.