Anton Lanski – Kill Me

Liverpool's masters of all things deeper than deep serve up a fine remix package here.

Anton Lanski's original version of Kill Me operates in downtempo/chill-out territory, but the rest of the EP is made of more floor-oriented remixes, which are the winners of a remix competition run by the label earlier in the year. Forteba gives us lo-slung, sleazy nu-disco/slo-mo, Insect O takes us into dub techno territory, Jedd's mix comes on like the very sparsest and most minimal of two-step, while What About U's rub is the closest to the sumpuous original, just with slightly beefier kicks.

The Forteba and Insect-O mixes stand out for me but it's an impressive EP all round – given that the remixers involved are competition winners and hence presumably relative newcomers, doubly so.

Out: This week

About: You can find Etoka Records at their website or on Soundcloud.

Klartraum – Playfulness EP

I've gotta say the Klartraum/Lucidflow school of deep, dubby, thinking man's techno has really been hitting the spot for me lately… so here's some more of it.

Three mixes, and while the above description works as an umbrella for all of 'em, they do vary. The Kris Wadsworth Space Face Remix is the deepest and dubbiest of all, leaving Nadja and Helmut sounding like they were locked in a huge underground water tank for a few days with nothing but a big bag of weed and a drum machine for company, while the Tim Underbelly Soft Porn Remix flirts with the very deepest of prog textures, layering sound upon sound to create an atmospheric and ever-evolving mix.

But while both of those are very cool, the pick for me here is still the Original, a glitchy, twitchy affair that's as close as deep techno ever gets to two-step garage. FFWD veterans, minimal/micro-house devotees and red-eyed dawn tokers generally should enjoy this one a lot.

Out: This week, digitally (it's been kicking around on vinyl for a couple of weeks but it only landed with me last week)

About: This comes not on Klartraum's Lucidflow, but on Tim's own UK-based Underbelly Records. Here's the obligatory website, Facebook and Soundcloud links, then…

Kaua – Spuma EP

Some serious deepness here from Switzerland's ever-excellent Acryl Music and Japanese producer Kaua.

The title track Spuma itself is the most obviously dancefloor-oriented of the three tracks on offer, a deep n' moody groover topped off with dreamy, floaty, proggy twiddles. Next up, Abelia is a late-night, sofa-surfin' kinda thang with ambience galore, periodic injections of fat squelchy bass, mournful brass and glitchy broken/two-step beats.

But while those are both very cool, the killer to these ears is Owni, which is as fine a slice of heavy dub-inspired deep house/deep techno bizniss as you'll hear all week. In fact it's probably closer to straight-up dub than anything… but that's by no means a problem, obviously. Crucial vibes, seen?

Out: For a couple of weeks on Beatport, but getting a full worldwide release this week.

About: Find Acryl Music at their website, on MySpace and on Soundcloud.

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!