- Outer space loopy house from the Canadian minimal originator.
- Mike Shannon is one of the most important artists for a certain generation of Berlin (and Canadian) heads. He helped develop—alongside producers like Akufen and Jeff Milligan—a style of swung house that was both understated and cheeky. He was also one of the first Canadians to make the jump across the Atlantic, setting the scene for the likes of Deadbeat and The Mole (not to mention the whole Plus 8/M_nus crew) to stage their takeover of the Berlin minimal scene in the early '00s. Although his output has been constant, Shannon has recently upped the ante, celebrating 20 years of his label Cynosure and releasing music with a frequency we haven't seen since his Bar25 heyday. Galactics, his first release of 2022, continues this run with a timely reminder that Shannon is one of the best producers to ever make loopy house.
Shannon's 2020 LP Cygnus Sutra—his first in over a decade—was filled with beatless sci-fi soundscapes. Galactics returns Shannon to his bread-and-butter: infectious, low-slung funk. The first two minutes of "Galatica" are tense with minor key chords, but an earworm synthline and closed hi-hat pattern show up to give the track a welcome groove. The kick drum on "Hover Drive" starts off sounding like a "Sub-Zero"-era Ben Klock accidentally showed up to play a Get Perlonized party, but one of Shannon's trademark microgrooves emerges with some extremely moreish dub techno chords.
Galactics is Shannon at the controls of his most familiar cockpit, doing what he does best. "Re-Equate Yourself," for example, is as classic as it comes, with a drunken bassline that sounds like it's being EQ'd in real time over the nervous chatter of synth squiggles—timeless, but still searching for new sounds and grooves. On Galactics, across three pieces of machine-soldered loops, one of minimal's originators is still figuring out ways to make micro-worlds to get lost in.
TracklistA1 Re-Equate Yourself
B1 Hover Drive
B2 Galatica