Top EPs June 2021

Feeling all a bit relentless isn’t it, but we could, just could be heading closer to a serious summer to remember. And everyone knows the weather is just saving itself up for festival season don’t they?

As per usual, we’ve had a little dig through some of the tunes we’re hoping to hear very soon, be that in a club, a forest, a field, by a lake, or in your bedroom writing dates in your 2022 calendar (only joking, pull out the fezzie dungarees).

Eden Burns – Big Beat Manifesto Vol III

Our Kiwi shaman continues his essential series with his biggest, beatiest manifesto yet. Mysterious and playful, acidy magic and bouncing little grooves, this is the kind of music that doesn’t just send you down the sewer, it follows you through in a bumper car and makes a dark dank space into a technicolour fairground.

Rat’s a Rat builds around a throbbing low end and echoing fishing hook of a vocal, before things get a little quicker, more acidic, and all the more stranger on Smudge. Yardmaster Pt. 1 teases the eardrums for 2 minutes 40 seconds, and then drops you onto a ghost train circa 3 ante-meridiem. Quick Match rounds off with more looping vocal samples and screw-your-face-up low end – try not to move your feet to this one.

Paranoid London – Annihilate the World & Start All Over

Where’s the 303? Remarkably, for a duo who we all thought were inseparable from the manically-laughing, distorted acid house sound they became ubiquitous with, there doesn’t seem to be one squelch of the TB-303. But to be fair, that’s because it was broken.

With no one able to reach them in the depths of lockdown to help repair it, Gerardo Delgado and Quinn Whalley set about creating Annihilate the World & Start All Over. And don’t be fooled son, this is unmistakably Paranoid London. Dark chords and hypnotic basslines aplenty, and still warped to the point of implosion, these are four tracks of unequivocally danceable, nostalgic material.

Overmono – BMW Track/So You Know

These two simply do. Not. Miss. Overmono return with two absolute classics in the making – breakbeat, UKG tinged sweat-makers that, when they do come on in a club, will jerk the room awake more quickly than the Apple phone alarm.

BMW Track starts with lots of warped bass slithering beneath a soaring breakbeat, before being dropped out and replaced by some shimmering ambience at the halfway mark – rolling as smoothly as a Beamer on the M25. So U Know takes everything up a notch and is Overmono at their best – when that bass arrives underneath the UKG beat and vocal… goosebumps, sexy goosebumps.

Señor Chugger – Day Party Nostalgia

From the sunny shelves of Paradiso Records comes this UV drenched 5-tracker from Señor Chugger. All slender silhouettes moving to Italo refrains in a haze of late evening sun and Marlborough smoke, opener Glad I Was There evokes a melancholy joy of good times past with its restrained yet joyful synth lines that almost stray from into trance territory.

Throw into the mix the vocoder vocals and joyful breakdown on For A Friend, the jet-fuelled, piano and synth-washed Hyperlock Club Track, an Easy Rider sample on the low-riding cruiser of M5 Night Drive, a truly excellent breaks-led, laser-reaching remix of track one, and a crate or two of Stella’s, and you have yourself a cracking follow-up to a flawless debut. Señor Chugger is one to watch.

Nathan Melja & Flørist - Wonderland

Let’s not ignore our happily grinning mushroom pal on the cover of this Nathan Melja and Flørist collaboration. This EP is trippy as hell. Melja’s Back And Forth is a dubbed out, spooky little bleeper of a techno track, drawing you along with cut up vocal samples into an eyes closed, head down two-stepping trance.

Then, Flørist steps up with a lush float through pattering rhythms and colourful, soothing melodies on Fade 2 Pink. The two versions each producer gives us of the title track lead us deep down the rabbit hole. Kaleidoscope visions on Melja’s, darkly swirling psychedelia on Flørist’s. If this is what Wonderland is like I wouldn’t mind being Alice.

Various Artists – MINDHELMET04

Mindhelmet returns with a gloriously addictive fourth instalment from the label, released with the simple message, “Return to the boing”.  Well return to the boing we shall, with this flawless four-tracker of lovely prog house, electro and minimal cuts.

Sweely’s Forbidden Fruit is washed in golden rays of sunlight, and is up there with some of the recent Coymix releases with its flashing, metallic synths over a groovy bassline. Henry Hyde makes it all a bit more grimy with bouncing pads and a focus around the low end, and Nathan Pinder continues in the same vein with a spankingly naughty electro number. Rounded off by DMC’s airy Nik-Nak, it’s another strong showing from Mindhelmet. 

Kasper Marott – My Space

Danish producer Kasper Marrot has his second go on Danish record label Kulør, and the results are euphoric and utterly, irresistibly danceable. The 10 minute title track stomps along with rasping synth lines and a hefty kick, and fades from 10pm sunset joy to 6am lost-in-a-strobe-without-a-care mode seamlessly.

On the B-side we find two straight up, for want of a better word, bangers. Frantic synth melodies clash with head-wobbling acid lines in a wonderful clash of airwaves that are just made to be echoing through a forest, the sonic strings on the marionette that can do nothing but reach for the lasers.

Various Artists – Roadkill 003

From the Manchester based night and label comes a great 6-track EP, with some serious grooves to be found throughout. Opening with a couple of minimal yet blissful dubbed-out house from 4TGANG, with HOGG lending his ear to Would Ya Kill 4 Me? the mood then meanders into the smoky, late night, high rise view that is Poly Tone’s Being With You.

Husky gets things moving along with the stuttering grooves and gun fingers of Upfront, before we reach the highlights of the EP. Tortuga’s Strings Of Love is a swirling lagoon in a tangled jungle of hi-hats and snares, and the crowning glory of this hazy night on the beanbag is Litherland’s dramatically twisting and turning Into Shade. Immaculate stuff.

Will Hofbauer & Sangre Voss – Steppe EP

Now it’s time for some bassy, leftfield techno nonsense in the shape of this warpy offering from Will Hofbauer and Sangre Voss. Steppe EP kicks off with Pumice, which sets the scene for the amount of low end that’s on display for the next three tracks with crunchy percussion sequences interrupted by abrupt, deep bowlfuls of bass.

Flundra (Flundra Mix) is a little floatier with distant vocal samples and pads, along with some toms for a nice organic feel, before you turn over and are confronted with the tribal drums, bird samples and distorted effects on June-O. We finish off with Ciel’s remix of the aforementioned, who adds some spooky vocals, and even more wildlife – because why not start making club-goers start confusing the darkroom with darkest Peru?

Third Son – Correctly Misunderstood

Get your cheapest sunnies out for this one, as Third Son releases three tracks of unpretentious modular synth exercises with only one purpose in mind. Title track Correctly Misunderstood is a triumphant little number, with plenty of upbeat melody and that’s as easy to get behind as Phil Foden when he’s dyed his hair platinum.

Drummy Drummerson Wants His Drums Back is a stabby, glitchy sweat inducer, one made for those more creative lighting engineers, before the neat little package is rounded off by some beach-side electronica, all playful bleeps and soothing melodies – the twisted cup of tea at the end of a big night.

Priori – Little Flower

One to finish with. Slightly cheating, because it’s technically a mini-LP, but who’s counting? And it can’t be left out, because this is some of Priori’s best. Sour Fruit is one to drift away on, a bit of a blissed-out dub techno number with a few extra colourful elements thrown in, whilst Sleepyhead and Loam are gorgeous examples of Priori’s impeccable sound design.

Bite Soft brings a trippy, downtempo feel but still retains the vast spaces thanks to the gently pulsing pads and nicely restrained bits of detailing. Finally, the title track and, for us, the highlight, is a slowly progressing, techno marcher, hand-crafted to close countless sets in, what will hopefully be, a summer to remember.