Tuff Culture – Circles

Despite something of a revival of late, the TIWWD inbox isn't troubled by as much UKG as I might like… so to get a whole album of the stuff that's as good as this, is something of a rare treat.

There are ten tracks here, that between them take in most shades of garage music the UK has ever produced. I Wanna Hold You is a jerky, twitchy 2-step number with cut-up vox inna Todd Edwards stylee, It's Me & You is a bassier affair with ragga vocal flourishes, Need You Around is smoother, more commercial 2-step, Walking In Ecstasy works a classic vocal over big, bassline house-ish backing, there are more bassline-y vibes on the R&B-vocalled Temptation (featuring Miss Rhodes), Like A Star takes us back to the SG glory days (complete with a few cheeky, very familiar samples) and Enigma Dubz collab Maris flirts with future garage/post-dubstep flavas.

Consistent enough stylistically to feel coherent, yet varied enough not to get same-y, this is a must-check for UKG fiends.

Out: This week

About: This comes on LU10 Records – find 'em on Soundcloud and Facebook.

Enigma Dubz - How It Is EP

This is one of the bits I didn't get round to last week, but a) I'd been feeling bad about that, cos it's really rather good, and b) the Geddes rub of Raffa L has put me in a garage frame of mind. So here we are.

In its Original form, How It Is is probably best filed under 'future garage', with its long, dreamy intro, looping, cut-up male vocal sample and busy, 2-step-ish rhythms, though unlike a lot of such tackle it's also pretty energetic and upbeat.  Elsewhere on the EP, Feelings Gone operates in more typical late-night future garage territory while We At War is perhaps better described as UK bass/post-dubstep. Rounding out the EP, Dancing In The Dark is an excursion into the dubbiest of late-night pastures, and one to melt into the sofa to.

A very strong EP all round.

Out: Last week, but what's seven days between friends?

About: This comes from the slightly mysterious but always checkable Four40 Records, who can be found on Soundcloud and Facebook.

So many tunes, so little time 21

Good Lord, another week gone by! So here's our regular Sunday night round-up of the best of the rest of the week's releases… some of which might definitely have had a full review had I not had to spend most of my spare time at the hospital this week!

Alex Savanin is up first with InFlight on Highway Records, a pleasantly drifty progressive houser with an unusual sampled vocal (the clue's in the title) and remixes from Hernan Cattaneo + Soundexile and, for lovers of the deep, Neil Quigley… next there's Christian Sol with Mist on Troll Records, a fairly gentle tech-house four-tracker with a remix of the title cut from Kruse + Nuernberg… another Christian, Christian Zimmerman, gives us Gas Hero on Birmingham's Out Of Bounds, a laidback cut sitting somewhere between deep house, Balearic, slo-mo and nu-disco, and coming with a remix from Pete Herbert… Damon Martin serves up some good old-fashioned vocal house rawness in the form of That Ain't Right, coming on Disco Bloodbath… Dave Crane's Oh No on Zipped Records is one for those that like their tech-house on the techno side, with a little added glitch… DJ Sulli's Mercury Rising on Innerflight Music is a Brazilian-influenced Ibiza terrace party cut… Enigma Dubz bring us a four-track sampler from their second long-player Genesis on LU10, of which more soon… Floska's Sunset On Ocean Drive EP on Turquoise Blue is mostly fairly acceptable-but-average tech/prog fodder – apart from Dorsmachine which is a MONSTER of a tune, check it!… JP Soul's Backsliding EP on California's Roam Recordings features a mix of bouncy house and mid/downtempo funk sounds, and comes with a Q-Burns Abstract Message mix of the title cut… Micha Mischer's Space on MUM is driving, druggy tech-house and comes with a Mark Holmes Remix… Montana + Stewart serve up some gentle, sun-flecked soulful house vibes on Universe Media with Slow + Steady… Sounds Of Juan deliver the tech-house goods once more with Nick Robson's Edvard Monogram Remixes EP, while Essex neighbours Stripped Muzik do likewise but on a slightly proggier note with Pao Calderon's Kiss Me Like You Do… Latin percussion dominates Tony Barbato's tech-house four-tracker The Tuscan on Favouritizm, but do make sure you check for the organ-laced Pharda… there's lots more drummy tech-house and bouncy, house-y techno on Southpark Recordings' eight-track V/A sampler Ibiza Summit 2012… and finally Vex Vexino's Simplicity for Headset Recordings sees us in more leftfield deep house/deep techno/slo-mo pastures, with Jay Tripwire on the remix.

THANKS ALSO this week to: Alessio Frino, Asymmetric Soul, Common People, Dr Kucho, Jeff Moore + Jamie Lie A Kwie, Jennifer Pliester, Jurek Przezdziecki, Monitor, the brilliantly-named Peter + The Stringfellows, Peter McGill, Project Inertia, Ray Rosenfeld, Spacebats and Swindle…

Enigma Dubz – Hard To Smile EP

Okay, time to flip the script a bit now and get on a future garage tip.

Well, I say 'future garage' but TBH, there's nothing particularly future-y about opener Between Me And You… with a roomy, boomy bottom end, heavily swung beats that verge on two-step, lush, lingering chords and snippets of barely-there soulful male vocal, this could have come out back in the late 90s/early 00s UKG glory days no problem. That's a compliment, by the way!

Hard To Smile is a more obviously contemporary affair, sampling Tupac's Smile for the vocal and laying it over a typical UKG backing at first, but then bringing in a (whisper it) trance riff. And at first you're thinking, oh no! – but you know what? It actually kinda works. It comes across like the trance riff's being used as just AN Other sound source, the way for instance Massive Attack might use an orchestral synth stab… as opposed to just someone chucking in a trance riff for instant get out of jail free idiots-at-Glasto appeal. I can think of a few bigger names in the grime/dubstep/etc sphere who could learn a thing or two here… softly does it!

So yeah, Hard To Smile has you worried for a minute but it all turns out fine in the end. And then there's Issues, another old skool-sounding cut which rocks a huge bassline and ragga vox, and sounds like the kind of thing I used to pick up from Release The Groove back in iDJ's earliest days*, back when I was just the garage reviewer!

As a good friend posted on my Facebook the other day, "It's all gone 1997 blud!". Some of us would say that's no bad thing :-)

Out: This week

About: This comes on Four40 Records, sister label to LU10 and Lepento and always worth checking – they do a lot of gnarly tear-out stuff that's sometimes a bit too full-on for this blog but they do turn out deeper gems like this as well.

You can find Four40 on Facebook, Tumblr, MySpace and Soundcloud… by the miracle of which, here's the EP…

Enigma-Dubz Hard to smile ***Out Now*** by four40records

*Shouts out at this point to Neil, Jeremy, Marcia, Angel, Adamm, Chas and the one and only Gary D!

Total mega-armaggedon FREE DUBSTEP death overload!

Well well well… for those of you that like dubstep, here's something of a treat. LU10 Records have clearly been at the Christmas sherry a bit early and, suddenly full of festive cheer, they've decided to give you some tuneage for free. A free track? No. A free album? No.

A free whole whopping bloody great 70 tracks? That'll be the one.

Yeah, you read that right… that's 70, as in one more than something a bit rude, tracks of speaker-bothering, gut-churning, in-your-face gnarly dubstep and grime… with a few poppier UK funky cuts and some deeper gems to be found in there as well. And a bit of electro. And some bassline. Oh, and a half-hour mix from Hybrid Theory & Saila as well, so make that 71.

The phrase 'rude not to' doesn't really cover it. So here you go, then…

More Freebies Link http://www.4shared.com/file/VaZsr6Bv/Freebies.html by LU10 Records