ant antic aka tobias koett

austrias producer tobias koett aka ant antic is singer, multi-instrumentalist and presents his new 4 track ep on whoop! records

raidens label always comes with something different from the usual d&b formula rubbish. martsmans track is very impressive, with his refreshing future sound. on the other side its business as usual from raiden with help from khanage, its funky, and not as full on as normal, but again right at the cutting edge. martsman got into drum&bass around the end of the 90s. debuting on new york based offshore recordings in 2005, he released on smaller as well as established labels like alphacut records or counter intelligence in the following years. in 2008, tracks on warm communications and hospital records sub label med school attract the attention of a steadily growing audience also from outside the drum&bass scene.

second dubwars release with tracks from off/grid, gunjack, antic soul and lenny san. delivered on blue marbled vinyl.

strong longplayer from jodey kendrick on clone dub records.

it took me a couple of years get invited to christophe de groot’s (aka circadian rhythms) homebase, and a couple more years to dive into his sonic archive. but time tells and basic moves 02 is what came out. the two tracks were recorded at earguard studio in brussels around 1996, at a moment when his interest was moving away from club music towards other golden musical horizons. “frequency” is a macro tech-house track in mid tempo.
i’m super happy i could archive it on wax because we almost fucked up the master dat tape by blowing up the player during a marathon listening session at his place. we had to open the device, unroll the tape across his house (full of records) and fold it back into the mini dat cassette. after a few hours and twenty metres of tape, the problem was solved and the tracks archived: “a dose of authenticity at a time of post-counter-cultural stagnation”. “house speaker call” originated in proto-techno forms. christophe never sees techno as a type of music but as a process. as a producer, collector and deejay he always dives deep into authentic forms of electronic music. deg’s antic personality shines out in the middle of the harsh beat-driven electro/techno track like a hopeful melody passing by on its elliptic orbit. tune your cells into his vibrations and get ready for these two timeless club tracks.

public releases hits the lab for some aural alchemy and to turn out its first release of 2017. a four-tracker from moscow’s phil gerus, scenes—or, in the producer’s native russian, &#1089,&#1094,&#1077,&#1085,&#1099,—manages to have a makeup that’s both peculiar and magnetic. the title’s a fitting one, every track feels like a vignette in a collection of short stories. separately, they’re self-contained, but a rich narrative arch is added when they’re sewn together. if there is a theme here, it’s of viewing the future through the dusty lens of the past, and each of the songs explores this in its own fashion. the kick-off, “ohashi sky garden,” starts as a hyped-up italo space epic, pumped full of swirling synth licks and sharp, tight drums, but it mutates into something completely its own when vocal samples (90s r&b?) and warm keys (prog rock rhodes?) enter. after the original’s brisk five minutes, the legendary richard sen—graffiti guy, breaks guy, house guy, disco guy, half-of-padded-cell guy—steps in to give it a trance-y tinge while doubling its runtime and adding a dancefloor-destroying hi-nrg coloration. the b begins with “naha swim,” a crunchy funk foot-stomper that might as well be an unreleased idjut boys or ray mang ditty dug up from the noid catacombs. fiery and furious, yet utterly cheeky. serving as a sort of coda to “naha” is “kiss of a kind,” a gerus take on 80s adult contemporary, replete with sleazy sax and sensual pads. a gentle nightcap to a zigzagging, antic 12-inch