Showing posts with label HNQO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HNQO. Show all posts

Saturday, 20 October 2012

Various – Collected Works

Various Collected Works OFF Recordings
Speaking of labels you've got to hand it to… what I love about OFF Recordings is you never know quite what you're gonna get. One OFF release can be soulful/garage-y, the next tuff and techy… as long as it's good music they don't care too much for pigeonholes, which is how it should be.

It's no surprise, then, that this four-track sampler EP takes in a range of styles. The EP opens with HNQO feat Bip's As I See, a deep/tech chugger with a fat, chunky b-line and a breathy spoken female vocal. Oddly reminiscent of Superstars Of Rock's classic Orange Sunshine in places, you'll recognise it from the "D to the O to the O to the D… E.P.M.U.S.I.C… go!" refrain – though as to what 'Dood EP Music' means, your guess is as good as mine.

Javi Bora, Le Vinyl and Melohman are up next with Destruction, a low-temperature techy groove with an "annihilation… destruction" vocal hook, female wails and a tuff, no-nonsense bottom end, which is followed by Mantra from Hector Couto and S.K.A.M, a more peaktime kinda cut that sits on the deep house/nu disco borders and works a voal sample lifted from Mainline (the Jason Load version, not the Black Ivory one – as also sampled by Love Revolution's Give It To Me Baby back in the day).

Finally, Detroit Swindle's The Standard Of Dialogue is another cut that owes a great deal to classic early 90s NYC – the "hehs" in particular recalling House Of Gypsies' Samba, so much so that it MIGHT actually be a sample, though I'm not 100% sure – and that's topped with a black power/conscious rap-type (second) vocal exhorting "motherfuckers" to "realise" and "reject mediocrity" and so on.

Ageing disco dolly that I am it's Mantra that wins out for me, with Detroit Swindle coming a close second. But it's all good, as they say.

Out: This week

About: You can find OFF Recordings in all the usual places, such as… leading social network Facebook! Cloud-based audio sharing service Soundcloud! And at their very own homepage on the World Wide Web! Isn't the 21st century marvellous, eh?

Monday, 11 June 2012

HNQO – All Over EP

HNQO All Over EP
Right, I warn you now… there is a TON of good music in this week's 'to blog' folder and I've got a busy week ahead so how much of it we're gonna get through remains to be seen! I'll do my best tho'…

Starting with this latest from the Midnight Social Recordings camp, a three-track EP from Henrique Oliviera. All Over itself is a very contemporary-sounding deep/tech house groove with a soulful male vocal that's oddly reminscent of My Friend Sam back in the day, and comes complete with a very satisfying Roland Nights rework that takes us into lusher, more late-night pastures.

The latter's very cool, it has to be said, with some great Korg M1 action, but the standout for me is the sparse n' techy Stupid, with its fat b-line and its clever, unexpected reworking of a very (some would say over) familiar vocal trope from WAY back in the day. I won't spoil it by telling you what vocal though, you'll have to check it for yourself!

Out: This week

About: This was a confusing one to review, cos the first promo came with another track called Love N Pain that's now been signed to Hot Creations instead, apparently… so look out for that one, too.

In the meantime, you can find Midnight Social Recordings, who are based in Leeds and run by Carlo Gambino, on the Big Book Of Face That Is Eating The Universe