san francisco/paris-based label spring theory is back with its fourth release. called sweet bitter love, it s a four track ep of manic sample-driven house from keita sano, a japanese producer who s been on a roll lately with releases for like-minded imprints discos capablanca, mister saturday night, and strictly groove recordings. sweet bitter love kicks off with the tripped-out flair of -once i found a diamond.- it s an uplifiting bongo-led cut with dubby melodics that sound like the kind of thing sleeping bag records would have put out in the early 80s. jacques renault provides a leaner peak-time version — complete with hard-hitting snares and growling bass — via his -once i found a diamond (jacques renault trouble funk remix).- things take a turn for the delightfully weird on the ep s namesake -sweet bitter love.- starting like a straightforward house cut, it explodes into a psychedelic collage of spaghetti western guitars, tribal calls, displaced jazz fills, and other forms of cleverly sampled soundtrack exotica. the release wraps up with yet another curveball on -bouzouk.- here sano lays out a subwoofer-knocking ny garage house rhythm that takes a left turn with frenzied bouzouki playing charting arpeggios through a haze of echoing foreign voices. taken as a whole, sweet bitter love is that rare idiosyncratic bomb of an ep that will keep your dancers moving and your trainspotters guessing — in other words, it s spring theory through and through.