Various - West Coast Wanderers

Right then, sorry it's been a while… been alternately busy/lazy. Anyway the good news: more great music has landed on the TIWWD doormat lately than in any month previously known to mankind. Well, lots, anyway. The bad news: you'll have to buy iDJ magazine to read about the very best, most upfrontest bits! And also, reviewing records for iDJ (where I don't babble shite about poetry and stuff but instead get to the point) is gonna take up quite a lot of my time in the immediate, so it may be a few days yet before TIWWD becomes the non-stop two-legged reviewing machine you know and love once more.

So before I immerse myself in the world of pain that is sticking to word counts (and the point), just a quick heads-up on another excellent EP from the ever-reliable Peng, that bastion of deep house based in the unlikely surrounds of rural Devon. West Coast Wanderers is a six-track affair, with contributions from label boss Andy Compton (both solo and as The Rurals), plus newcomers Thursday Lads and Pete Mo, and slightly, er, oldercomer Jay Tripwire.

Compton's solo offering Clear Day is a mellow, midtempo deep houser with a jazzy, almost torch-style vocal. Tripwire's Cleansing Tones couldn't be much more different, a lively upbeat affair with a vaguely acid-y kinda feel until the lush piano chords kick in to reassure us that we're still well and truly within Deepsville City Limits. Skyrise from Pete Mo is a musical, string-drenched instrumental number that should work in the more soulfully-oriented house clubs; Sirseil and Shiva Song are a couple of floor-friendly Rurals deep house cuts, the former edging it for me with its jazz-funk flourishes; and finally the Thursday Lads deliver another spaced-out deep houser in the form of Shark Soup, which is groovy but which I'd like even more if the percussion was just a wee bit less busy. But that's just me.

All told, then, with six varied tracks for your cash this is a well worthwhile purchase for all the deep house jocks out there.

About: Peng – "the southwest's deepest, funkiest record label," as they so modestly put it themselves – should need no introduction (gonna have to find a new way of saying that), nor should Digipeng, the digital-only offshoot… but in case you've just joined us, here's their website anyway. So all that remains to say is this is out on November 27…