following a double headed debut on our recent nasty rips comp. – a crisp remix of hackmans ‘ always’ and a fizzing solo outing -‘not afraid’, montreal producer reagan grey makes her full shifting peaks debut with a high grade 3 track ep, alongside 3 useful remixes. opener ‘owl’ featuring sandy duperval on vocals, takes a neat song of love and life and rolls it over a punchy ukg/house groove, adding classic sounding organ stabs and swingy rhythms, with a tight arrangement keeping things moving along. ‘feel the pressure’ features christie nelson on vocals, with an equally strong , r n’ b inflected song woven in and out of a looser, spacier arrangement, rgs snappy drums again underpin proceedings. not afraid reappears, having made friends along the way via it s nasty rips inclusion thanks to driving detroit-influenced synths, a pulsing bassline and sweet builds and drops. on the remix front, lukas ( future boogie ) keeps things simple on owl, with a fat, kick-lead groove and sparing use of the vox before drifting into a crowd-pleasing breakdown halfway through. benway (aka fast rising muscovite nphonix) takes swathes of the feel the pressure vocal for a ride over broken beats and a bass heavy backing, with hints of techno torque setting his pressurize mix apart from the similar de pressurize version.

another year comes crashing into view, and another instalment in the nasty rips and shifting peaks series is upon us, as ever looking to bring together a mix of new, up and coming and established names, via a chaotic miasma of styles and tempos.

opener getting run down loops up a nagging hip hop sample over skittering dukey beats and washes drifting pads and spacey keys over the top for a hypnotic late night groover. reach out goes at a calmer pace, but revolves around intense builds, insistent polyrhythms and detroity riffs for a bit of hypnagogic drama. on memix duties, om unit does what you hope hes going to do, injecting reach out with seemingly infinite swathes of space and bottom end, looping about at his own pace, but with that constant sense of om unit purpose. nphonix closes out proceedings with a tweaky, rubbery acid style workout that will find friends in bass and house camps.

including remixes by west norwood cassette library and amu lin.

leeds/nottingham duo mak & pasteman might be in their 20s, but their musical influences stretch from the funk and soul of the 60/70s, through juan atkins proto-techno, to soulful house, d n b and uk garage. which wont surprise anyone listening to this, their debut ep for shifting peaks, a 4 track statement of intent that sounds like it couldnt have been made any time but 2012, but also feels like 20 years of hardcore continuum is embedded deep in its musical dna.

nice price deal !!! no doubt looking for somewhere with a bit of political stability and a brighter economic future, 24 year old polish producer jan dudzik aka sekta recently joined many of his compatriots by leaving london and farking off back to his native warsaw. luckily, he left us a bottle of the finest vodka to remember him by, and a four track ep of stepping rhythms, fat bass and dubby atmospherics to help wash it down.