Sunday 15 April 2012

Matthieu Duchesne – Afternoon In The Garden EP

So this was gonna go into the So many tunes round-up… only on playing it again I realised a) it was too wonderfully varied in style to sum up quickly and b) it was too just plain wonderful to not get a full review in its own right.

Afternoon In The Garden in its original form is a tough, heads-down chugger for deep house dancefloors, preferably circa 3-4am. When the hecticness has worn off but you're feeling good and you're feeling like you could go all night… those are the moments this is for. The Alvaro Hylander Remix then heads off on a very different tip… it's a late-night deep smooth groove worthy of Harley & Muscle themselves.

Flip it over and you'll find Deep In The Night. In its original form, this is another deep n' jackin' dancefloor workout that drops down to some seriously heavy-duty, er, droppery in the middle (hear it and you'll see what I mean). Perfectly suited to today's techy floors, it'll also delight those who remember the glory days of NYC dark garage circa 1995… it's big, it's sparse as you like and it's freakin' gosh-darned storming, frankly.

AND THEN, as if that wasn't enough, there's a remix from Robots Need Oil that takes us into heavy dubbed-out territory, with reggae stabs a-gogo and rasta vox. And that's also pretty awesome.

It's a personal pet hate of mine – as a hard-working sub by day – that words like 'stunning' and 'breathtaking' get so over-used these days that they've ended up meaningless. It's doubly a bummer right now, cos it leaves me struggling for words to describe this EP. So I'll just say that I've tipped Matthieu Duchesne on this blog before – he always does great stuff. But this… this is as good as house music gets in 2012. Go seek.

Out: This week

About: This comes on Jesus Pablo and Di Riviera's Something Different label…find 'em on Facebook and Soundcloud

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