Never bite the hand that feeds you – a truism that is likely to be ignored on the island. However, on their debut, Graeme »The Revenge« Clark and Craig Smith don’t turn away as much as their brother in spirit Mark E from what they did in the last years at the turntables of Warm-Up-DJs: sample-oriented House-Edits in slow motion, slowly turning from a contemplative start up to prominent Soul- and Disco-vocals. It’s still crystal clear that on One Night In The Borough, the duo doesn’t just want to satisfy the need for easy-dancing. Quite the opposite: the night begins with a thoroughly demanding two-pack just around 120bpm before the astounding If The Feeling’s Right with hardly 90bpm and an epic vocals-sample proves yet again, why this kind of deceleration was hot shit three years ago. At the same time, this track discloses the basic problem of the actually cleverly sequenced album: the few tracks below the border of 100bpm are all highlights because they sound so much more alive and rough than the very neatly programmed but somewhat soulless floor-fillers of Deep-House beyond 115bpm that dominate One Night In The Borough not only by quantity. Too often do Clark and Smith invoke this typical English Tech-House-Sound of a Jimpster or a Milt Jackson. Even though it pays tribute to the right heroes, in its execution it still reminds the listener of the pedantic Deep-House-surgery that’s dominating our realms at the moment. It comes to a point when one wants to shout at them to not only share Moodymann’s already legendary RBMA/MPC-Interview on facebook, but instead to actually take it to heart. Because we do know that – at low revs – they can do better than that.
Various Artists
John Gómez & Nick the Record present »Tangent«
Mr Bongo