From Slough To San Francisco

Out today, remixes of five tracks from Duncan Gray's Five Fathoms Full album which came out last year, a chuggy cosmic disco delight from the heart of Slough. Five Fathoms Further is the hundredth release on Tici Taci which is an achievement in itself. The remixes take Duncan's sound and colour palette as the starting point and head outwards. Meat Katie remix the title track, adding a vicious kick drum, a throbbing bassline and some haste to proceedings. 

Bagging Area favourites Number (an extra- curricular outfit for Red Snapper's Ali Friend and Rich Thair where they get to explore punk- funk/ dark disco) take on Hot Jupe and send it to early 80s New York, the rubber band bassline sounding like it's been listening to ESG and ACR and the sampled voice could straight from an NYC radio station. Lovely post- punk bump and grind.

Jack Butters remixes In The Attic, high calibre machine funk bringing distorto guitar, tabla and fuzz synth bass. Mr BC's version of Greenville heads for the cosmic- disco after party, widescreen, robotic synth action. Finally Justin Drake takes on Shark Bumps, thudding kick drum and rumbling bass suddenly lit up by synths and sparkles. There are excerpts at Soundcloud and the full Five Fathoms Further can be found at Tici Taci. 

Over in San Francisco DJ, musician and producer Cole Odin has launched a new project called Joy Theatre, a label and a production house for the Bay Area. The six track album opens up with an already released piece of music, the seven minute majesty that is Psychemagik's remix of Cole's Dawn's Approaching- blissed out SF cosmische that never stops giving with chuggy drums, angelic vocals, big piano chords. Cole wrote Dawn's Approaching as a tribute to Underworld's Rez and when the synth squiggle appears in the third minute you'll hear why. A welcome re- release. 

There are five further tracks on Joy Theatre. Babylon Black is a dark disco delight from two Bay Area producers, Buna Babillions and Corey Black. Evil Eyes is bass led party music. Jesse Fahnestock is well known round these parts as one half of Jezebell and all of 10:40. In the 90s Jesse lived in San Francisco and DJed at Bulletproof, an influence on Cole. Jesse appears on Joy Theatre under his own name, Jesse Black Fahnestock, with a track called Quienes Son, eight minutes of dub- disco with snakey horns working their way in and some of Jesse' signature production sounds. 

Over on side two there are more Bay Area tracks and artists- D- Freq by Sweetdique starts out like the theme from an 80s teen movie but when things have gone very dark indeed and then turns into a deep, slo mo joyride. The Arturian gives up Break Free, shimmering cosmic sounds with thudding drums and bass, flashes of synth blazing across the skies. Finally Jamel Lee closes the album with I Remember The Sun- the sound of children playing, deep house drums, synth chords always looking upwards and a spoken word vocal about the sunlight. 

Vinyl available here. 

Smart Dust

New out from Tici Taci is the second full length album by Mr BC, ten tracks bound together as Smart Dust. There is plenty here for those fond of the chuggy/ ALFOS/ electronic indie- dance community to enjoy, with sparkling. cosmische synth sounds, low slung bass and slow mo machine drums pumping and hissing away. Ultrasuede is a starlit opening track, a sleek shimmy under the mirror ball with robotic vocals and melodica. 

Title track Smart Dust throbs and shimmers, with a topline that could be either a clipped guitar or a vocodered voice, and gorgeous sequencers, keys and piano runs.

The album glides by, each track a man/ machine joy, Hospital Blues and Frequency Illusion, bringing deep, funky bass and thudding kick drum, and nu disco sparkles and synths. Previous single Make It Burn is present in its Disco Mix form, Chic style guitars, while Are You Acperienced is stellar with a pulsing acid bassline. After nine slices of uptempo cosmic chug Smart Dust ends with Endless Loop, a four minute piano and FX piece. Halfway through the drums pad in and it lifts off, Kling Klang synths firing off in technicolor before it all drops out leaving just the piano. A rather lovely way to finish. Smart Dust is at Bandcamp, available on CD and as download. 

Make It Burn

New from the mighty Tici Taci label comes this three track EP by Mr BC (known in his daily life as Bob Salmond), Make It Burn. There are three mixes/ remixes. The first is the Rave Mix, a seven minute joyride of New Order drums, pulsing sequencers, dive bombing, oscillating synths, stereo panning and squelch... more synths, more kick, more pulse

Label boss Duncan Gray provides the second version, his own remix, a stripped down version with an 80s Cure- at- the- disco bassline, a bouncy topline, synth strings, and after a build up of nearly three minutes, some glorious, life affirming, hands in the air pianos. 

The third version is a remix by Viper Patrol, a version led by some speaker rattling wobbly bass, and after another lengthy build up, more wondrous piano action that manages that trick that great music does- hedonism and dancing with a tinge of melancholy in the chords. 

Both Duncan and Mr BC also appear on the recent Shelter Me- In Crisis album on Paisley Dark, an eighteen track compilation released to raise money for homeless charities and doing a very good job of it. Duncan's The Remote Control Thief, Mr BC's Call To Arms and sixteen others can be found at Bandcamp. Other highlights include a very woozy track from Al Mackenzie, some juddering filth from Hunterbrau and Jezebell's Perfect Din. Today is Bandcamp Friday where more of the money goes to the artists, in this case to the Beats For Beds charity. 

Duncan is preparing for an album release later this year, a solo album currently going under the title Five Fathoms Full and it promises to be a bit special. More news as and when. Last November Duncan put together an eight hour mix to promote the Tici Taci Decade celebrations, ten years of the label with four compilations. It's a masterclass in the long form mix, kickin gin at 90 bpms and rising as Duncan puts it to the giddy heights of 120 bmps- if you like your music chuggy and slinky, electronic and bass- led with kick drums and cowbells and sliding into wonky disco/ house/ ALFOS kind of areas, then you could do a lot worse than click play on this tonight and let it unfold. It's here. 

Shake It Up

The Tici Taci label celebrates ten years of releases this year, an oasis of electronic excellence and chuggy dancefloor wonders. Tici Taci have a run of releases lined up to take us through 2023 with Mystic Thug, The Long Champs, more from Mr BC, more still from Duncan Gray and four retrospective compilations covering sixty- four back catalogue tracks. One of the most recent releases is from Jack Butters, whose Shake It Up throbs and pulses for three minutes before, without warning, turning into a loping skank- and then back again. 

On the remix tip the Hardway Bros Meets Monkton Uptown version is a dubbed out delight, the bassline dredging the bottom end and the spaced out synth sounds lighting up the top, everything cool and tickety boo for eight minutes. 

The second remix, by Mr BC, is a snake- hipped, lithe dancefloor groove with an increasingly hypnotising acid synthline aimed right between the eyes, which builds in intensity through to the sampled voice at the end which concludes, 'you must be out of your tiny mind'.