Convection Criminals, Owen Acid, Jye Feelgood, Nesbit – Analogue Juice Extraction EP (AER02)

An excellent second helping from AER records (their first is reviewed here). It’s all good, but for me a standout is Jye Feelgood’s Acid Swamp where I’m even prepared to forgive the ‘kiss my acid’ sample because the rest of it is so frickin’ good. With a loose feel, like it’s about to come apart at the seams any second, and 303 so deliciously stewed you can taste it, it’s like, if Rob Zombie made acid techno records he’d probably make this one.

Fajita Swing by Convection Criminals is another highlight. It’s got all the roll and bounce you’d expect from anything involving Fil Devious (Convection Criminals is him and Gav Feedback), as well as a vocal sample from The Big Lebowski that the Criminals have had the wit and style to mess with till it’s all pulled out of shape. The result is a track with proper tension and depth. As Nesbit, Jared Blyth’s Prephaser builds from a restrained, grid-friendly opening until a breakdown around the 4.15 mark when the acid fireworks into life, and Owen Acid’s Naughty Control mixes up hard, reverb-heavy drums with an old skool acid line and a masterly, fuzzed-up breakdown at 3.40. In all, cracking stuff.

Get it from: Audio Eargasm at Bandcamp

Austin Corrosive, Fil Devious, Gav Feedback & OB1 – Corrosive 909 01 (Corrosive Digital)

Cat no: Corrosive 909 001
Release date: 24/05/11

Get it from: 909 London 

Recharge – Austin Corrosive
BPM: 148
A big tune, this, with plenty to like, starting with hypnotic tribal drums and a vocal sample that gives it a finger of fudgy funkiness. Next a bad-tempered, distorted acid line drops by and kicks the place apart for a while. It’s got horns with it. Things get real nasty. Then it leaves and that funky vocal serenades us out. A good track and a total contender for best of the EP, although that honour ultimately goes elswhere. 

Loose Control – Fil Devious
BPM: 145
Buffeted kickdrum, a sample saying ‘lose control’ (not, ahem ‘loose control’), plenty of breaks and an acid line that builds, drops and builds again. A solid but unspectacular tune. Moving on, and the thinking behind Corrosive Digital is not only to run a digi-only label alongside the vinyl-orientated Corrosive, but also to showcase up-and-coming producers, so the next two tunes belong to a pair of names that are new to us.

Fix as Funk – Gav Feedback **
BPM: 145
…and the acid drops in straight away. First beat of the bar and that 303 is snarling: a big, funky acid line that dominates the first half of the track, leaving enticing little details to pop away in the background: old skool bleeps, nicely separated percussion, the ‘damn you all to hell’ sample from Planet of the Apes. Things are mixed up around the halfway mark, and that amazing 303 falls away a bit. Is it instrumentation? No, it’s a power loss. Is it supposed to end that suddenly? I don’t know, but it does. Even so, it gets the coveted double asterisk from me.

Dumbass – OB1
BPM: 155
The Dumbass of the title is George W Bush, and the track begins with his famous howler from 2000 when he declared, ‘We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.’ There are a couple of other Bushisms elsewhere in the track, and while the track’s okay, and the acid sufficiently screeching, it’s… I don’t know, having him in there just feels like an old joke that wasn’t very funny in the first place, and I can’t really get past it. Sorry.