Tanz Organelle – Series 7 EP (Hand Made Acid)

Beautifully produced, just as you’d expect from a man of Jay Brown’s pedigree, Series 7 harks back to Sheet One-era Plastikman, over-rubbed for the warehouse set. On Filterfuck (135 BPM) cavernous drums fill all available space, thick and immense, and growing more intense and cloying, while a simple, contrasting acid line scans left and right. Likewise Blue Alert (131 BPM), which operates at a more gentle, but no less ominous throb, and again has the feel of empty industrial space, with echoing static pulses a counterpoint to a more insistent 303 line. M876 (132 BPM), meanwhile, has the brightest kick as well as crunching sound effects that resolve into a terrific riff and squabbling acid line, my only complaint being that the riff isn’t developed a bit more. In all, fantastic stuff, deep, rich and forbidding with more than enough bang for your buck.

Get it from: Beatport

dyLAB – 808 Business EP (Hand Made Acid)

Cat no: Hand 008
Release date: 06/08/11
Get it from: Beatport

The Melbourne 303 professor returns, this time on Hand Made Acid, an intriguingly idiosyncratic label run by Melbourne’s David Haberfield, who records as Honeysmack. The fit is a good one. Navigate to the the Hand Made site and you’ll find a label philosophy that ’embraces Acid and Techno music made the traditional way, with hardware. We celebrate electronic dance music produced with contemporary and vintage gear,’ which is just what dyLAB’s all about. His last EP was the Filter In set, an exercise in ascending weirdness. Here, he has reined in the experimentation, with each of the three tracks, Play, Manual Play and Pattern Write (all 130 BPM), carefully sculpted and finessed tributes to the crystalline ticking of the 808 (the tracks are named after modes on the 808) and by extension to Chicago. Why, it’s even got cowbells. There’s a warmth and depth to the tracks that though they’re more dancefloor ready than Filter In, and groove accordingly, give them an enveloping, ambient quality, making them essential gear for the discerning acid head. Here’s hoping there’s an album in the works.