Quarion - Karasu (Remixes)

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  • If, like me, you’re very much into rolling, tranced out electronic music rather than traditional house and techno proper, a studiously deep house label like Zürich’s Drumpoet would seem like an unlikely place to find a fix. Such are the pitfalls of single-mindedness taste I guess. But fans of the hypnotic stuff should check this EP out: not so much for the Deetron remix, which is fair-to-middling chord techno aimed squarely at Detroit heads, but for the modest but effective Crowdpleaser remix on the B. Like Marc Houle’s ‘Borrowed Gear’ from 2004, a track which it resembles and would mix well into, this cut is unusual because of the stinginess of its bassline, which is made of precisely one single note, and draws the line at one note per kick. It’s a trick which lends the track an uncommon uptightness: no funk, no boogie, just Krautrockian repetition and an appealing sense of expectancy. And like ‘Borrowed Gear’ it’s a structure that allows the music to be all about the tweaks, this time of the bass note itself: sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, sometimes so loud it oozes out of the music and onto the floor. It doesn’t hurt that Thomas Brinkmann has done a bang-up job mastering this remix either—like the dubsteppers say, there’s a “pressure” to it. All this underneath a top end of chicken scratch guitars and long violin bows that will appeal to Dial fans and the like, as well as melodies that are catchy enough to be memorable but not too catchy as to be annoying. But that bass is where the real beauty is. If you’re single-minded enough to get pleasure from a producer tweaking one bass note, this is the record for you.
  • Tracklist
      A Karasu (Deetron Rmx) B Karasu (Crowdpleaser Rmx)
RA