- Here comes the second EP from fledgling imprint 54 Music. Born out of knowledge gleaned from three years of quality basement parties in Shoreditch, the label hopes to cut some wax to represent its two sides—Light and Dark—according to a selection of current champs and future heroes. This time it's a Swedish duo that makes up two-thirds of production outfit Sour Grapes, Alex Caytas and Aleks Patz.
Their offering doesn't mess around for more than thirty seconds before pistons are lowered into the thud thud bass, jimmying around until punctuated further with slinky slices of the sort of undercurrents heard throughout Guido Schneider's excellent Focus On. When the keys join in, they prod away in controlled crescendo until the flanged synth takes over, you breathe again and then the introverted lead goes deep and the kick returns. As the name of this arm of the label suggests, it's a dark, but also kinetic, track, which offers a lot.
The Tony Gomez remix takes a reductionist's approach, subtracting elements and going down a driving but bouncy dub route, and it would work well amongst the sets of Sven Väth or his Cocoon cohort Gavin Herlihy. It's a little too similar from start to finish to outshine the original, but moves your head nonetheless.
Gun For Hire take in, churn up and pummel out the original track's bassline through layers of filter and delay, making for an altogether rougher-edged and more brutal tech grinder. Finally, Kevin Over maintains the grittier feel of the other remixers, adding claps and ticks to make this a dark, backroom, late night 4/4 thriller. Echoing machine rasps twist and tighten to an intense zenith at the mid-point, and then a probing bassline returns to hammer the track home with a swing in its hips.
Overall, this EP shuns the deep template of the moment—quite brave for a new label that might otherwise have plumped for the deep assuming it to be a quick buck—and instead offers up some raggedy assed tech with a dark and intimidating soul.
Tracklist 01. Alex Caytas & Aleks Patz - The Sun Turned Blue
02. Alex Caytas & Aleks Patz - The Sun Turned Blue (Gun For Hire Remix)
03. Alex Caytas & Aleks Patz - The Sun Turned Blue (Kevin Over Remix)
04. Alex Caytas & Aleks Patz - The Sun Turned Blue (Tony Gomez Remix)