Various Artists - Smugglers Inn Voyage 1

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  • Daniel Berman already has his fingers in many pies, releasing murky basement house as Red Rack'em and louche disco as Hot Coins, as well as running the Smugglers Inn podcast from his Berlin base. The producer has now expanded his operations with a record label. Smugglers Inn Voyage 1 is its first release, collecting productions from an array of names both established and unknown. And while these four tracks lack moments of head-turning originality, there's still plenty here deserving of appreciation. With "N'oublions Pas," Glaswegian Carlos Nilmmns supplies a heads-down stomper characteristically poised between the earthen and the celestial; the former represented by its rugged groove, all mucky hi-hats and loose percussion, the latter by gusts of icy synth work and a 303 line that flowers into full-blown acid euphoria in the breakdown. Elsewhere, the acid theme is picked up by Berlin-based veteran Franklin De Costa on the self-explanatory "Acid Test Bass": an arid, burbling workout that maintains its sleazy intensity with consummate ease. According to the press release, Tommy Rawson is the new alias of one half of a well-known "carnival bass tinged" UK production outfit, and tardy summer anthem "Shy Track" certainly indicates a knack for pleasing the crowd: it's a real swooner from the opening, its gaseous horn chords giving way to glossy, fragmented vocal samples over a reassuring big room bump. Finally, Estonian producer and sometime Maria Minerva collaborator Ajukaja rounds off the collection with the most striking and leftfield contribution. The producer's output is quite schizophrenic in tone but the unifying factor is always his densely psychedelic arrangements, and "Slim Ja Part" doesn't disappoint in that respect: the drums seem entirely secondary to rich arpeggios that periodically break down into stuttering, hypnotic chunks of sound.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Carlos Nilmnns - N'oublions Pas A2 Tommy Rawson - Shy Track B1 Franklin De Costa - Acid Test Bass B2 Ajukaja - Siim Ja Part
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