- Vinyl only. Limited edition. 300 hand-stamped copies. Labels seem to have a fascination with banding these terms around right now. And it's certainly a boat that hasn't left Tiefschwarz and their Souvenir label on the shore on their latest 12-inch. The one-sided, two hundred copies through Word and Sound The Whistler trades in all the release conditions thought upon (contentiously or otherwise) as signifiers of a high grade product—the issue here being that no amount of exclusivity can compensate for a poor piece of music.
"The Whistler" does execute a reasonable enough impression of spirited jazz house cut, but onto its frame work is laid an effusive "Burnin"-esque bass sequence and a, ahem, novelty three-note whistle. It's the kind of quirky turn that a Kompakt or Circus Company could perhaps pull off in their own insouciant manner by the skin of their teeth. But set against a scale-creeping low-end and fist flailing rhythm section, the track opens its eyes not nearly wide enough to be bundled into the "loveable scamp" bracket. The days of Ali and Basti Schwarz's scene-stealing remixes around the middle of last decade are unfortunately reduced to a hazy recollection by the time the needle drifts over the "bonus beats" version of the A1. Word of a forthcoming Souvenir-based collaboration between the pair and Cassy is probably the morsel to extract from this otherwise ill-advised outing.
Tracklist A1 The Whistler