Buscar:detroit rising

The good ship Ransom Note sails on!

Continuing our commitment to releasing the finest dance music from planet Earth, our latest missive comes from fresh-faced Belgian kit freak Placid One. Squeezing out analogue techno from a studio full of synths that burble and shimmer and croak, Placid's lead track 'C Balloon' is a drum-less masterpiece, an arpeggiating ascent into a chrome-plated future. The track belongs in the lineage of the emotional best of Detroit, as mysterious as it is melancholic, it's a vision of computer blues for the 21st century.

It's followed by 'Bombay Persuasion', a jitter of broken tech-funk building to a rumbling throb of bass, and 'Life', which chops up classic breakbeats with late night acid secrets. All three tracks combine Placid One's youthful exuberance with a yearning for the hardware mentasm of early Brit pioneers, the ghosts of Aphex Twin, Orbital and Kirk Degiorgio can be heard echoing through their grooves.

On remix duties we have Deutschland's finest Cass. who provides a blissed out reimagining of 'C Balloon', unravelling its synths into an epic of found sounds and ambient drift. This is followed by a floor ready refix from Ransom Note favourite Timothy 'Heretic' Clerkin, who rolls 'C Balloon' into a warm house jam, all classic synth hits and sun-rising acid bubbles.

the label say: What is soul really The answer to that is a various as the music that claims it. We here at WPH HQ do not know the answer either, but we do know an exceptional piece of music when we hear it. Enter Fabrice Lig, Belgian techno legend with his roots in our little country and his ears definitely in that place called Detroit.
Respected by his techno peers and his Detroit inspirations alike, Fabrice's music is always full of funk and emotion. These two qualities are very much in demand in WPH circles, so it was only a matter of time before Fabrice joined the family.
On 'Border 2 Border' Fabrice brings us two tracks, the title track funkin' and swingin' like nothing else and with a big dose of Motor City chords, making for a true mental dancefloor anthem. Word has it that label boss Red D wrote lyrics on the spot when he heard this one out loud...so who knows what's coming in the near future... On the flip side 'Ocean Rising' goes for arpegiatted bliss and a bass line to rumble you out of your bras or pants. Welcome to WPH Mr Lig!

25 years old, born, raised and based in Berlin, but all at home in the club. Nitam's debut Retold EP (U-TON 06) already set the tone in 2015, and here we are three catalogue numbers and 14 months later with his second 12 release on Unterton taking a similar line as his debut four-tracker did: new varied sonic themes with an overall fresh sound. Although still being young of age, Nitam outlines once again his interest in dance music from the late 80s and early 90s, presenting himself schooled by classic Detroit House as well as Chicago Acid House, but all without limiting himself to a restricted pallet of styles or catering towards musical expectations.

A1 starts off gently with Keen Insight' and its almost romantic, dreamy and hazy vibe - a mellow, melody-driven and emotional listening piece in the vein of Nitam's initial track Retold'. The following Perception' on A2 is a more functional and club-enabled cut, taking shape with an Acid-informed bassline, moaning syth pads plus claps and percussion here and there.

The flipside begins with Influx' featuring a springy, muffled yet muscular kick alongside a rising synth line. What at first feels like a tool track soon evolves into a more complex song format once the sustained string and oscillating melody kick in. The EP is rounded off by the eponymous Cancellate' and its almost Dubstep-like, placid rhythm progression and drive while being dominated by ceremonial synth pads and wraithlike keyboard speckles.

U-TON 09 once again shows the versatility of Nitam as a producer, a talent that is also being reflected by his ever-increasing interest in DJing.

180gr! This 12" features remixes from Henry Wu and Ben Hauke, two rising South London natives whose dusty house sounds are reminiscent of the jazz-wise swing of the West London broken beat sound, a movement Sean Khan himself was heavily involved in.
London based jazz appassionato Sean Khan, will release his second album 'Muriel' later in 2015. Dedicated to the driving force behind his musical career, his mother Muriel McGinley, the album is virtuosic free, Latin and nu-jazz experimentation, drenched in soul with the help of the vocal talents of Omar, Sabrina Malheiros and Heidi Vogel (Cinematic Orchestra).

This 12' features remixes from Henry Wu and Ben Hauke, two rising South London natives whose dusty house sounds are reminiscent of the jazz-wise swing of the West London broken beat sound, a movement Sean Khan himself was heavily involved in.

On the A side, Henry Wu, a key member of the tight-knit label/ loose collective 22a Records (also home to the likes of Mo Kolours and Al Dobson Jr.), imbues the original track with a distinctly organic and off-kilter groove: a loose and earthy quality which is hallmark of the Wu sound and makes for a perfect complement to Khan's delicious melting pot of jazz, soul and broken beat flavours. Sturdy yet swinging with strong jazzy synth stabs and topped with a child-like, wordless, sing-along vocal, it's sure to be an underground summer club hit.

The B Side sees the mysterious Ben Hauke, whose previous releases have been courtesy of Melodica Recordings, steep Khan's 'Things to Say' in his own murky yet soul-drenched sound, one that falls somewhere between hip-hop and broken house. Not much is known about this young producer, but what we can glean from his work on this remix is a sound drenched in syrupy, slightly sinister keys and a plodding, unpredictable thump not entirely dissimilar from previous Far Out remix contributor Theo Parrish. Like the work of that Detroit innovation, these two young Londoner's contributions both look set to lend a funkily idiosyncratic and offbeat edge to all the right dance floors.

#3 Live Act of 2013 at Resident Advisor, one of the most in demand remixers around, a total of 156 gigs in 2013, releases for Rush Hour, Ovum, Macro; booked out months in advance from Berghain to Ibiza to the main electronic festivals ... KiNK: Arguably the world of dance music has not witnessed anyone else rising so clearly from bottom to top just by the centrifugal force of sheer talent. Being based in Sofia, Bulgaria, without a support network, a campaign or any media hype, his music alone - live and in the studio - created a momentum whose end we have yet to see. Lenin said: 'Communism is Soviet power + electrification of the whole country.' Hardly did Lenin suspect what an inspired take on these words could do: post-socialist techno. A child of 80's late socialism, KiNK grew up on the home computers Bulgaria's IT scientists had created by backwards-engineering Western technology. Fueled by nuclear energy on the edge of desaster, a whole generation of kids was trained to hack. Dance music gradually dripping in through early dial-up internet connections, the acoustic fingerprints of distant parties put Eastern producers from KiNK to Nina Kraviz to Vakula under a spell. Yet KiNK spent years of backwards-engineering the sounds of Detroit, Chicago and early Warp.