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Late night,  early morning – who can tell? – Deuperium’s superb Telemetry EP makes a bid to colonise both. The brainchild of Northwich-based producer Matthew Lloyd – his debut, in fact – it’s an EP boasting album dynamics: a four-tracker that makes complete – arguably even more – sense when taken together.

Most EPs, for example, your common-or-garden EPs, would start with Why Not? with its 120 beats-per-minute, bossy, finger-wagging acid and electro stylings. This, after all, is the one you’d choose if you were browsing for play-out material on Beatport.

Not Deuperium. Lloyd is playing the long game, and Telemetry kicks off with Together, a distant cousin of Orbital’s The Box that triggers all kinds of minor-key loveliness, as though John Carpenter had composed an unused love theme for Escape From New York. Squiggles of acid gradually toughen up as the track progress, before it slides into Galaxy News, a gorgeous, drifting dream of a track that, if anything, is even more reflective.

And then – and only then – just when you’re in the mood for something a bit more hip-swinging, do you get Why Not?, and it’s great, and it’s followed by XOX Acid, which works the 303 in a downtempo Melbourne-sounding acid workout to see us to the door.

In all, this is a great release for Slime and, like I say, full marks for that track sequencing, which makes this a genuinely rewarding listen in its entirety. Here’s hoping an album is in the works.

Get it here: Juno Download

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New on Circuit Protocol comes this from Matt Knight, aka MK303, and it’s a cracker. Maniacs on bongos kick off Parallel Universe, a riff kicks in and it’s a good riff, it’s a livable riff, but what sets MK303 productions apart is his readiness to take it to the next level, and sure enough he does that here – and how. A cloud of dust heralds the arrival of the 303, which bosses the song from good to brilliant. Another one appears and we’re talking some serious hed-melting, psychedelic shit here, completely nuts and irresistibly funky.

Risky Neural Stimulant at first appears to be a more laidback venture than Parallel Universe, until it really gets going. Imagine the bassline to I Feel Love on steroids and you’ve got the picture here. It fair thumps along, with intertwining 303s slithering between skyscraping kickdrum. In short, these are two absolutely storming tunes and this EP comes highly recommended.

Get it here: 303 Acid Techno

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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:

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New from OB1, aka Olly Berry, comes this double-drop from SUF Projects, and it’s the business. As ever, Berry delivers a commanding, dirty-but-funky 303 experience, announced with a rush of far-off sirens and the main vocal line ‘Basic Chemistry’,  a sample from Breaking Bad. It’s used brilliantly here, too; rather than simply lift it, Berry’s attacked it with a pair of garden shears, buried it in the garden for a week, then exhumed it*, so it’s got a real distorted, decayed sound, and when the track breaks down at 2.50 into an extended sample it’s as though we’re hearing it from within the depths of a nightmare trip. Fantastisch!

Clearly Berry’s been caning the Breaking Bad, cos the flip The One Who Knocks rolls out a second quote, this one with an even more fearful edge to it. Pair it with a more ravey, drum and bass vibe and this is choice material. So choice that there’s very little to choose between this and Basic Chemistry, but if you forced me to choose, if you really forced, like, if you threatened to take away my eyeholes, then I’d pick The One Who Knocks.

Get it: 909 London

Hear it:

* Because that’s how you achieve that effect, right?

Eyedropper from Acid Kazuals is an absolutely killer track, the whole thing teetering on the edge of crazy distortion, much like the narrator of the tale around which it’s built, who’s out for a walk when a tripping guy squirts an eyedropper full of acid – twenty or thirty hits’ worth, he reckons – into his mouth. “I realised I was in trouble,” he says, with commendable understatement, and the nightmare begins, soundtrack, this: acid like chainsaws, filthy riffs scuffing in the background, the whole thing seething with the ominous, something’s-about-to-go-horribly-wrong feel of The Gift. Miss it at your peril.

Next up is Make People Run by Mobile Dogwash vs Steve Getz , and it’s another scary sample, this one from Dexter (I think), underpinned by metallic 90s techno and of course a patented Dogwash acid line. It’s surpassed by the next track, Git Yer Freak On, mainly by virtue of those obese peak-time chords that slice through the second half of the tune. Lastly Total Shitstorm is Dogwash seen through the prism of vintage Stay Up Forever. Imagine any tune by Magnum Force torn apart by a pack of dogs and reassembled by silent children with no faces. Yeah, that evil. And then, just when you think you have the measure of it, a murderous acid line appears and the sky tears open. It’s a barnstorming end to yet another essential Chase Yer Tail release.

Get it from: 909 London

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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

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In recent weeks Soitiz has been relaunched with a fresh website design and even a new sister label. A press release about it is here, but in a nutshell what’s happened is that Swifty has teamed up with an established artist/producer, a ‘sleeping partner’ if you like, who’ll be helping out with mastering and A&R, while from now on the label will also have a sister label, Soitiz Silver, offering free downloads in order to help promote and establish new talent. Meanwhile, the long-awaited Soitiz 002, the Droppin’ The Acid EP, has appeared, so let’s take a look at that…

First up, Swifty and MK303′s brilliantly titled I Keep Saying No To Drugs But They Never Listen has a super-bouncy, rolling kick, that takes us up to a mini-break and drum roll at 1.39 when the main melody kicks in. And, hello, it’s the riff from Q Project’s Champion Sound given an Acid Techno makeover, underpinning some seriously unhygenic 303 action. Fantastic.

What’s Goin On is vintage A.P. He’s at his best when he’s slowly ratcheting up the tension and here he does exactly that. Opening with a low, growly, grid-friendly riff, like ominous noise on an empty rain-swept street, a growly 303 steps out of shadows, before around the halfway mark the whole caboodle pings off into some seriously squally, full-on footchase action.

Meanwhile, on Activate MK303 continues to tweak convention, dropping us straight into a tune that already feels fully formed. It’s anchored by a superb, signal-pulse, a siren call that gives the track its heart and gives MK303 the freedom to let the main acid line get loose, flitting in and out of the beats, rising and falling.

Lastly Serious Shit finds Starsky & Hutch raiding a vintage sounds for the build and when the acid arrives at at about 3.40 it’s gratifyingly fat. What’s more the track uses this sample from Back to the Future, which automatically distinguishes it in my eyes.

So there it is – yet another essential release from Soitiz. A rejuvenated Soitiz, no less, who are bringing more than just their share of enthusiasm and excitement to the scene, they’re brining raw talent and monster tunes too.