Audio Love 8.10.15

 
Music

Octo Octa – Further Trips EP (Deepblak)

Aybee’s Deepblak imprint has lined up the excellent Octo Octa for their next 12” and it’s a special one indeed. The Brooklyn-based artist is an alumnus of pretty much all of my favourite labels including Argot, Running Back and Skylax. This current EP sees him bring warm, emotive house music in full technicolor. The feel is bright and optimistic, but all tinged with a slight element of melancholy that makes things interesting rather than saccharin.

Out soon on wax

Medlar – WOLFEP30 (Wolf Music)

Medlar has been a busy man of late, with an excellent collaborative EP with Dan Shake on Delusions of Grandeur and now this cracking four tracker on the mighty Wolf Music. The result is a complex, ambitious and accomplished release that takes in quite a lot of sonic territory. If you’re looking for a straight up dancefloor record you won’t be disappointed but that’s definitely not the focus here. We’ve got four to the floor tracks, but we also have more abstract material and the slowly developing percussion of 'Dawn Chorus' is to die for.

Out now on wax 

Mosca – NSM004 (Not So Much)

What is it with naming your EP as a catalogue number? This is the second one this week. At least have the balls to come up with a name that you’ll regret for the next 18 months. I’m not, of course, speaking from experience you understand. Anyway, I jest. This is the 4th release on Mosca’s excellent Not So Much imprint and I think it might be the best one yet. It’s bouncy, tapped, and genuinely edgy. And I don’t mean edgy in the way someone moves into a fully gentrified, sanitised, costa ridden neighborhood and refers to it as edgy because there’s a homeless person and a poundland. I mean it’s a bit weird, stressful, pent up, agitated. But it has energy. Bravo.

Out now on wax

Charity Shop Disco Delights

Candi Staton – Nights on Broadway (Warner Bros)

Oh boy. What a record. I think it was by the Bee Gees originally but I try to forget that. I picked up the 7” of this a while back. I can’t even remember what charity shop it was in but I’m so glad I found it. It’s one of those records that just gets me. That intro with the chunky drum beat, growling roads and those horns. Pure bliss.

Karen Young – Hot Shot (West End Records)

This one is pure disco fire and I picked up the 12” for a quid in the Red Cross shop at the end of my road. I remember telling my wife numerous times when we’ve been drunk dancing around our living room to this track that there’s a Daft Punk sample at the start. Nothing. Then the other day she stopped everything and proclaimed to the world “Daft Punk sampled that!!” What a revelation. Love this record.