Various Artists - Where The Wind Blows

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  • Over time, the heat around even the hottest labels inevitably cools. Fashion is fickle, and even if there is no qualitative drop in your output, people move on. One day, it's likely even L.I.E.S. will be just another good underground label. That must be painful, but to an extent, it depends on how you handle it. Kompakt, for instance, ploughs on, unperturbed by whether it's hot or not. Ostgut Ton, you imagine, will never change as the hype around it begins to die down. On Where The Wind Blows, BPitch Control takes a different tack. An attempted repositioning, a line in the sand, it apparently marks the rebirth of BPitch as a label where vocal tracks and "colour" are prized, where a seamless marriage of form, function and a "new emotionality" is now paramount. True, you may be a little shocked by just how poppy and song-orientated these 17 tracks are. The first genuinely floor-ready number (a tight, tripped-out slab of cosmic-funk from Tomas Barford) doesn't arrive until halfway through, long after the shock of hearing Dillon and Telefon Tel Aviv make like the techno hipster Rihanna and Calvin Harris, on "Feel The Fall," has faded. But, in totality, this is no watershed. Where The Wind Blows is simply more of what BPitch always delivered at its best: left-of-centre house, techno and electronic pop. Where... might fail conceptually, but the quality of the music speaks for itself. If nothing else, it is a potent reminder, should you need one, of what a great label BPitch can be. Its highlights come from unexpected sources. Stars Ellen Allien, Aerea Negrot and Apparat contribute fairly mousy tracks, whereas Eating Snow's "Siamese Twins By Choice" (think: Whitest Boy Alive) and Mr Statik's glowering "Lighthouse" both shine. Curiously, for all its ostensible pop thrust, the remarkable thing about Where... is its house tracks, previously a weak area for BPitch. Chaim's glistening, widescreen progressive house on "Summer Rains" seems worlds away from the Alive album, while Amirali's "No Strings" is seductively beefy and brooding, a clever reimagining of late '80s vocal house, had it been made by Depeche Mode rather than Marshall Jefferson. David K's "Last Touch" is equally as good. A strange rhythmically disjointed piece of tech house, its gabbling vocal gives it a very BPitch edge. Where The Wind Blows doesn't get us any closer to a simple, cohesive sense of what BPitch is, but that's no bad thing.
  • Tracklist
      01. Ellen Allien - Gate Of Light 02. Dillon & Telefon Tel Aviv - Feel The Fall 03. Eating Snow - Siamese Twins By Choice 04. Joy Wellboy - The Movement Song 05. Jahcoozi feat. Barbara Panther - Rainbow 06. Mr. Statik - Lighthouse feat. Beatrice Ballabile 07. Camea - Love On The Balcony 08. Tomas Barfod - Sullen Fire 09. Chaim - Summer Rains 10. David K - Last Touch 11. Aérea Negrot - Stop My Craving 12. Viadrina - Fallin 13. Amirali - No Strings 14. Kiki & JAW - Mama Magic 15. Thomas Muller - She's A Woman 16. Cormac - Find U 17. Apparat - Borodino
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