- When exactly did Axel Boman become ubiquitous? Since DJ Koze's Pampa label helped spread the Swede's name to a wider public, Boman and his off-kilter deep house have turned up on Moodmusic, Permanent Vacation, his own Studio Barnhus label, Tartelet, Rebirth, Absurd, even Josh Wink's Ovum and Jesse Rose's Play It Down. Whatever the case, his well hasn't run dry yet: all three original tracks here are prime Boman, striking the perfect balance between intuitive grooves and weird-ass sound design, jumping between samples like a jittery kid with the remote.
"Esteban Peligro" builds a shuffling house groove atop a conga pattern reminiscent of Nina Sky's "Move Ya Body." The plush chords and dubbed-out voices are ripped straight from the nouveau deep house textbook, but Boman still manages to make it sound fresh. Part of it's in the details—muted modular whoops, clarinet bleats—and part is in the idiosyncratic mixdown, with percussion samples jutting out of the murk like sticks in mud. Mostly, you're impressed by Boman's talent for weaving new sounds into the mix: the groove is as bumpy as a carriage ride on a rutted road, and the scenery never gets boring. Appleblim and Al Tourettes deliver a 130 BPM mix derived, it seems, almost entirely from Boman's stems, neatly flipping the vibe for a different rhythmic signature.
I'm partial to the two B-side tracks. "Naomi" isn't that different from anything we've heard from Boman before, with an acid line reminiscent of his recent Holger Zilske remix and the sampled chord stabs that turn up again and again in his discography. The one-shot vocal refrain might leave you feeling a little yeah, yeah, yeah, but, again, I'm struck by the way Boman can make done-to-death deep-house tropes come to life. "Depression 101," meanwhile, is for all the house heads whose hearts beat at minus 8.
TracklistA1 Esteban Peligro
A2 Naomi
B1 Esteban Peligro (Appelblim & Al Tourettes Remix)
B2 Depression 01