Schatrax - Vintage Vinyl

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  • If you simply heard Schatrax’s Vintage Vinyl 12-inch without any context, you might think that it was yet another 12-inch jumping aboard the deep house bandwagon. ‘First Heartbeat’ is almost a cliché of the form, what with a man muttering at the beginning about a “heartbeat in the music”, the watery dub narcotic synths and the slightly funky bassline. But it turns out that this is the actual template for the cliché. These tracks are from the mid-‘90s, their restrained deepness is now gold standard for many of the current drum poets making hay out of a bit of bongo. Timed perfectly to fit the prevailing mood, you might call this 12-inch a cash-in—if the originals weren’t so hard to find, and Schatrax wasn’t releasing this in such ridiculously limited amounts. God knows why, though. ‘I Hold You Precious’ and ‘Overcome’, the 12-inch’s two B-sides are also both expertly plotted tracks. ‘Precious’ continues the restraint of the A, this time around a de rigueur echoing-into-space synth line and a disembodied diva vocal. ‘Overcome’? Much the same again, except this time it’s got a techno tinge. The beats are solid—and the tracks are the definition of mid-set floor fillers that neither announce themselves nor kill the mood. They’re simply artfully constructed pushers that only reveal themselves as distinctive when played outside of a mix. All in all, it’s a really good new deep house release, then, except from ten years before it became fashionable. Again.
  • Tracklist
      A First Heartbeat B1 I Hold You Precious B2 Overcome
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