Steve Mills, Benji303, Tik Tok & Tassid – Interstate One (IO 001)

Interstate One is a brand, head-spankingly new vinyl-only Acid Techno label from Russia. Though homegrown artists will be featured on the forthcoming Interstate Two, this debut release features all UK-based producers. Here, you’ll find the emphasis is very much on the 303 here: these tracks bang, but they don’t bludgeon.

Waveform from Steve Mills begins things with a rolling beat and an acid line that builds, with another, higher-pitched one skronking away behind it. It’s classic Mills, his ability to hit the sweet spot and stay there remaining undimmed.

Warped is the sound of a producer really finding his feet. In this case Benji303, who gets all lab technician, laying down a base solution of tough techno and tweaking acid over the top. A breakdown at around the 3.00 mark sees the various elements dissembling, but this isn’t about fireworks so much as elegance. Benji’s tracks are always marked by a total love of the 303 sound, and so he lets the acid build again to the outro.

Tik Tok’s been on a bit of a roll lately. I never got around to reviewing Rave On but thought it was an ace tune. Like that one, Angry Villagers lays off on gimmicks and concentrates on  heads-down bangerishness. Unafraid to explore new ideas, it shares a common quality with his best tracks, where although you feel as though they could spiral out of control at any second, they never quite do. Ace.

Lastly, Tassid, who couldn’t be dull if he tried. Asylum uses echo-treated vocals and found sound for that genuine scary sanitarium quality, and when the acid comes in at 3.03 (yes, really) it’s scuzzy and funky as hell. A superb way to end a flawless EP.

Get it from: Stay Up Forever

Steve Mills, Sterling Moss, Mobile Dogwash, Jack Wax – Braingravy 04 (Braingravy)

With its stellar line-up of Moss, Mills, Dogwash and Wax, Braingravy 4 always promised great things, and lo! Great things have come to pass.

Ride the Snake by Sterling Moss and Steve Mills leads off, and there is indeed something slithering about it – like a vast, mutated alligator feeding off luckless sewer workers beneath the city streets. Accordingly the track gets more and more corpulent, bottoms out to a cavernous, echo-strewn breakdown and then treats you to a delayed drop that, when it comes – when it eventually comes – tears off the back of your head. And that’s a good thing.

With a Parsnip is business as usual for Dogwash. i.e it rocks like a bastard. And how do they get those acid lines so damn filthy? After that, Burnout, from Jack Wax drops the old-school acid, 303 that couldn’t be more different from Dogwash if it tried. In terms of the EP it’s a brilliant change of pace, and hats off for that, while as far as the track itself goes, I’ve got one word: whoosh. It’s a builder, a grower. The kind of tune that like maggots festering beneath an aluminium cranial insert, will gradually burrow its way into your brain. And that, again, is a good thing.

Get it from: Juno Download

Hear it:

Digital goodies on the Braingravy train

So, Braingravy, one of the most exciting of the new labels, has now gone digital, which is great for those of us with mothballed decks, even more so when you consider what a tasty line-up label boss Steve Mill has managed to secure, past present and future.

To kick things off Mills has reissued Braingravy 01 to 03. I haven’t sprung for 01 yet, but I can say that 02 and 03 rule – six tracks of engine-room Acid Techno featuring a mouthwatering array of talent, old and new. In the new camp, Jamie Taylor’s Tik Tok and Olly Berry’s OB1 both feature, with the latter on Braingravy 02 providing the scintillating, Jello Biafra-sampling banger Won’t Get Fooled Again. Keeping him company on 02 is Rene Reiter’s 18 Years Old Cat on Acid, a hard but quirky track with a broken beat feel to it, as well as Sterling Moss and Steve Mills’ Electric Landlady, which boasts an almost eerie, echo-flavoured break. Meanwhile, on 03, the aforementioned Tik Tok drops That’s Got to Change, a clean-lined banger. No More Fucking Rock n Roll by Dave the Drummer, Chris Liberator and Steve Mills is phat but still isn’t the highlight, that honour going to the hideously addictive Acid Underground from Mr Mills himself.

Meanwhile, number 04 is ready for take-off, with tracks from Jack Wax, Sterling Moss & Steve Mills and Mobile Dogwash – an utterly superb line-up if ever there was one, and due out January 21. Braingravy take control, indeed.

Get it from: Juno Download

Steve Mills – SUF Projects 08 (SUF Projects 008)

Braingravy boss Mills pays homage to Stay Up Forever, with two old skool bangers full of high-pitched, mid-nineties 303 that tussle around a series of breakdowns with all the energy and appeal of enthusiastic Labrador pups. Let’s be honest here, if you’re reading this, chances are these kind of acid lines elicit an almost Pavolvian response in you and both tracks are practically guaranteed to get your serotonin bubbling. Pirate Radio is efficient, dirty, bordering on a DJ tool; SUF Forever, meanwhile, is an absolute gem – all about that acid line, which has been tweaked and crafted to within an inch of its hypnotic life, and about two-thirds of the way through rises to almost unbearable levels of peakiness before galloping to the finish line. Superb, have a Jenny Agutter.

Get it from: 909

2011 Autumnal Acidity

Some NEW acid in the mix, mainly from the last few months.

Tracklisting is:

Alex Kenji & Luigi Rocca – Acid Monks
F+S (Franz & Shape) – Acid One
Adam Derry – 130 Jam
Woo York & Vegim – Bass Machinnen (DAVE The Drummer dub mix)
D.A.V.E The Drummer & Marcello Perri – Purpose
Justin E – Resistance
Freethinker – Release The Scud
Freethinker – 401
Chris Liberator & Sterling Moss – Acid Corrosion
Steve Mills – London Acid Techno
A.P & Josh Inc – Pure fuzz
Nitronoise – Drink & Drive
Zoid – Day Off
Tik Tok & Turtle – Boxed Up
Tik Tok – Fucka Hooka (2011 mix)
Justin E – Jacob’s Ladder
Mobile Dogwash – Roll Em Phat
Acid Chochi – Running For Fun
OB1 – A Little Something
Subutex & DJ D8 – Fuck That
Austin Corrosive – Recharge
Tassid – Recharge Remix
KitShunt – With A K (1st Edit)

Steve Mills – SUF Projects 005 (SUF Projects)

Cat no: SUF Projects 0045
Release date: 24/08/11

AVP**
BPM: 148
AVP’s a cracking track. Plundering the original Predator for its sound-effects, rather than as the name suggests the wretched Alien vs Predator, it’s full of menace from the beginning. A low-slang acid line burbles and a higher one whipcracks away while Dutch and the boys venture deep into the jungle looking for something that’s out there, that ain’t no man. But for once the true magic lies not in build-and-release or bruising power but in the atmospherics. Mills has integrated Predator breathing, then war cries and even synthesised speech with the music itself to supremely shattering effect, creating a piece of work that’s as creepy and immersive as it is banging – and what’s more, truly original.

No Turning Back
BPM: 148
You can’t have everything, and in this case you can’t have a B-side that matches up to the majesty of the A-side. Maybe I’m bored of The Matrix samples or maybe I’m just wrung out by the essential AVP, but No Turning Back seems to lack a certain dynamism. It’s a great tool, no doubt, and the echoey vocal is really effective in the mix, but it’s not the main event.

Get it from: 909 London

Meanwhile, the magnificent AVP appears in this mix…