Tom Dicicco’s debut ep, Material Things draws a connection with Baud’s sole other artist, Roger23, and his mentors, Swayzak.  This three-tracker from the young Englishman, which includes a Patrick Graeser remix of the title work and closer “Empire”, is a tough, slinkier affair that sits in that dusky area between dub techno and deeper tech house.

The build on “Material Things” culminates on the other side of four minutes into its almost 8-minute run with little more than the expected shuffle step after a very quick break, but it works.  The tension is in the lightning-in-fog dub chords and insistent, muffled kick.  While darker, sexier dancefloors will love the pacing, the stripped-down approach of the track puts it more in the transitional camp than peak-time floorfiller.

The Patrick Graeser mix attempts to bulk up the original for a more mainstream dancefloor position.  Percussion elements are more pronounced and the filtered delays are pushed up to provide more of an obvious swing than Dicicco’s mix.  The subtlety and slink of the original are sacrificed, and unfortunately the mix doesn’t progress beyond usage as a dj tool.

“Empire” is the track of the release for me.  Coming in around 5 minutes in length, its build progresses smoothly towards the groove and a wonderfully fluttering synth chord that drops in just after the two-minute mark.  Dicicco pulls back the snares around half-way through for a break that might go on a touch too long for anything other than the latest of late-night crowds, before the whole thing reconnects and closes out the final two minutes in a wonderfully hazy dub-house swing that would have the Swayzak guys considering other extreme sports in South American countries.

I put this on this morning expecting something calm and pastoral. I’d just been listening to the new Johnwaynes EP on Mule Musiq and needed something a little refreshing.

“Runners”, despite the name, did just that.

By the end of its 7:36 I was pretty sure this one was going to go down as an instant classic. Your fourth wind while sun is streaming in through eastern windows pretty much sums it up. A heavy-weight back half is the extended release of the working first - great stuff. This is what I remember from back in the late 90’s, in the bottom basement room at 19th & Grand. Morning Factory has redefined house music and given us the single mos-errrrrr . . .

Hey wait a sec, who exactly IS Morning Factory?

That’s a good question.  I started at their Discogs page, and was surprised to find this was their only listing.  But then clicking over to the Yore Records entry made me stop.  Andy Vaz’s label, touting only the best of “old school” producers?  He’s got a co-production with Alton Miller on there?  Todd Sines as the first of about 20 releases?  The Above Smoke and Dubbyman brothers, Terrence Dixon, Kez YM?

Morning Factory has to be one of those anonymous super-producer gem things that’s been getting really popular lately, right?  Some classic producer from the early 90s dropping a bomb quietly out of nowhere, among Yore-friends, right?  Mike Banks featuring Dam-Funk?  Turns out it’s just two guys from Holland and it really is their debut release.

So that’s who Morning Factory is.

I’m pretty sure that’s Stevie Edwards of  “Future Love”/”Better Day” fame on track 2.

I found myself just sitting here, listening to these songs over and over again.  Granted, it was 8:45 in the morning, but in some parts of the world that’s just when the party is getting started.  The energy here is, as I said, refreshing.  The sneaker freakers are going to destroy “Raw Tunes Vol 1″ and ep closer “Someone” is a loveshaker, a smooth gallop ride in the house countryside.

This one goes down as one of the best debut eps I’ve heard in quite some time.

Elizabeth Fraser is in possession of my second favorite voice in music. While first place is on lock-down with a certain Icelandic alien-fairy with whom Fraser shares so many parallels, the shear entirety of the Cocteau Twins’ catalog finds its identity in Fraser’s ethereal singing.

While both former Twins Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde have gone on to do other things, Fraser has essentially stayed out of the spotlight since the end of the Cocteau Twins. Her last great hurrah, the appearance on Massive Attack’s “Tear Drop,” now sits at over a decade in the past. Sadly, it has taken the death of a close friend of hers, Jake Drake-Brockman, for us to receive this new work.

Produced as a collaboration with Drake-Brockman and partner and former Bunnyman and Spiritualizer Damon Reece, the original version of “Moses” opens with Old World-style accordian before dropping into programmed drums that remind me of quite a few vanilla “trip-pop” concoctions from the earlier part of this decade. Reece’s backing accompaniment is not the star here though.

Fraser’s ability to wrap almost indecipherable lyrics in a gorgeous blanket of warmth and comfort is as finely-tuned as they were throughout the run of her former band. While we are not treated to wild swoops either high or low, her soothing coo sounds deliciously mature and confident, demonstrating she hasn’t lost a bit of touch in the years since we’ve last heard from her.

The EP is rounded out with two remixes. The first, from Welsh producer Timothy Lewis’ Thighpaulsandra project, mines the ethnic aspect of the original’s accordians and doesn’t stray very far from the tempo or rhythm structure either. Fraser’s voice is underpinned with a plucky synth cord occasionally, but still rightfully remains the star.

Former Alpha member Andy Jenks turns in the other mix under his Spaceland guise, and, like Lewis, doesn’t deviate too far from the original. Fraser is upfront and reverbed a little bit more in the mix, and this time set in front of a more organic-sounding Bond/noir-theme backing track that reminded me quite a bit of Portishead from the second album on. Not exactly my favorite era of that particular band, but Fraser is easily the prototype for a singer like the Bristolians’ Beth Gibbons, one whose voice alone can carry an otherwise unimaginative recording to praiseworthy heights.

There’s been very little information on whether this release is a one-off to honor a passed friend, or a possible hint that a long-rumored solo album might actually be materializing. While Robin Guthrie has quite masterfully continued on a very similar trajectory as the entirety of the Cocteau Twins’ catalogue, Fraser has obviously preferred to be in no rush to pick and choose her involvement in projects up to now. I can only hope this release encourages further projects to materialize that might have a more updated feel than this one ultimately left me with. There’s no arguing with the beauty of that voice; now I’d like to see it wrapped in something as imaginative and luxurious.

The release can be purchased either on 12″ or digitally via Rough Trade and the Guardian UK  features Fraser’s first interview in a decade on their site.

And that’s how you do it folks. You want to have a strong contender for ep of the year, you release it late November - forget February.

Out of nowhere, I’m not sure what this is. I think Touch might be the vocalist here or just an alias for Tony Valor, who’d last been out in 2000 on BBE and prior that on the 1977 Moulton and Valor-produced Energizer album. Is this another Black Devil Disco Club? Not quite in definition, but the reality is both tracks here are future garridge like the best of what I’ve tried to hear so far this year.

Both sides of this are upfront and made for ladies and gentlemen and are quite enjoyable. L2S is a digital-only label, and I’m fine with that - less overhead means more output - keep it coming.

While Exchange Bureau Music might not be the most well-known label in Detroit, it’s definitely had its fair share of notable releases.  Alton Miller, Ibex, and Kansas City’s favorite son Pat Nice (who has a remix on Midnite Jackers’ If You Only Knew ep) have all released on the label.  This time around, Tony Ollivierra gets back into his Ibex guise to follow up the outstanding 360 EP on Rush Hour with four more slices of quality Detroit-infused house music.

“Panacea” opens up with John Tejada-ish synths and a simple, pumping rhythm just before keys twinkle in and the space disco is underway.  While there’s quite a bit going, the production is crisp, helping to contribute to the sustainability of the piece over seven and half minutes.

“Soulmate” offers a tougher, grittier synth bedrock amid a more persistently dirty drum track.  Once the higher-end pad drops and strings kick in,  things get a little overwhelming, but it falls in line with a lot of the house side of Detroit  - uptempo and pushing dancers without being overly aggressive.  Again, another seven-plus minute track that would be suited for a late-night crowd that’s not afraid of a little bit higher bpm.

The back half of the ep starts of with the drum intro to “Phoenix”, a little bit of cowbell and then some very nice propulsive pads.  The lead-in culminates in an insistent key line that changes just enough to introduce the groove before a tempered saw synth fills up the mid-range.  At just under five minutes, “Phoenix” feels like the most accessible track on the album, delivering a foreshadow of the climax early and then working towards an outcome before fading out.  This is definitely one I wouldn’t mind having another couple of minutes of.

The title track closes out the ep with a wonderful Aubrey-esque liquid funk groove and a spoken word piece.  The bass is big dumb simple, giving easy back-and-forth instructions to the butt while the feet are counting out Olliviera’s drum programming.  Everything else will be following the layers of pads that drop in with a little bit less insistency than found elsewhere on the ep, and probably the better for it.  “Eden” has a sense of maturity to it, of being at home on an adult dancefloor, one full of dancers who know who they’re going home with at the end of the night.

With appearances on Planet E, Transmat, and Intuit-Solar’s Comin From the D compilation to his name and a Discogs entry that goes back to 1996, there’s no point in calling Olliviera part of the new wave of Detroit house producers.  His sound calls to mind a denser, house-thinking variation of Model 500’s cosmic disco-symphonies or some offworld John Tejada/Recloose collaboration than it is to either the stripped tech-house of Curtiss/Troxler or the electro-funk of Omar S, Patrice Scott, or Moodymann.

After an almost seven-year lapse between releases,  Olliviera titled his 2008 ep The Second Coming, and both Eden and 360 continue to serve as a re-emergence for an artist who’s got roots as well as a re-introduction for fans who are just now beginning to examine the years of music between the Third Wave and the New Wave of Detroit producers.

Here’s to hoping the quick turn-around between these two recent EPs means there’s going to be a lot more Olliviera and Ibex in our future.

If you aren’t familiar with Blasta, you’re probably not alone.  The St. Petersburg (that’s Russia, not Florida) based producer has been around for a little while now, releasing drum ‘n bass on Strictly Digital, Dub Bullet, and Respect, but with one full-length (Blastorama) already on his resume and now with the release of The Incredible Adventures Of Kenzolika And Quetzalcoatl Among The Air Castles on Argon, he’s going to be getting a whole lot more attention.

Granted, with a title like that, it’s easy to think Blasta might fit somewhere more along the lines of the Aztec Mystic/Los Hermanos crew or a Studio Ghibli press release than Russian junglists and dubsteppers.  While the Detroit contingent shouldn’t have a problem finding things to like about this release, The Incredible Adventures is instead an exercise in future-breaks that straddles the line between the atmospheric ideas of Good Looking and Silkie’s City Limits Volume 1, full of best-behaved gangsta swing and future funk, both alien and organic at once.

And just look at that artwork!

My first exposure to Blasta was the third track on the album, “Saturday Morning Bed Steppin, ” so we’ll start there.  Even though the first few moments are a fairly familiar drum/sound intro, there was an obviousness that the track was going to go somewhere.  Indeed, once it did, all bets were off.  The full swing of the track kept my feet thinking jazzy drum n bass, almost Peshay-ian in its rhythm, while the step and bass had my heart set to dubstep.

It is both rare and sad that I don’t spend nearly enough time these days listening to albums from beginning to end, but when a track like “Saturding Morning Bed Steppin” gives me the full-on business like this, it’s not a hard decision to make.  Starting over again at the album opener, “Owl’s Fall” acts a nice introduction to the album - jazzy sax lets you know you’re going to be in for a good amount of  soul along the way, while hand drums mixed with delayed snares keep the rhythm uplifting but not strenuous.

Blasta’s Rasperry Syrup mix of L-Wiz’s “Syrup Feeling” moves the tempo up a notch and makes it clear that this is going to be a listening experience nearing blissful overload.  It might initially seem odd to include a remix of another artist on an album - especially as the second track - but it works here, much as it did on Blastorama.  Watch out for that guitar lick, syrupy indeed.

Even slower-tempo numbers like “Blast Air” are meticulously composed to keep the listener engaged.  Jazz keys and upright bass build a foundation for stuttering brushes and a soulful “I fell in love with you” vocal to all drop into a reduced-bpm step that just asks for an arm-around-the-waist dancefloor embrace, perfectly suited for either late summer evenings or cold fall body-heat nights.

“Feels So Good” is a throwback UK Garage track in the very best sense of the tradition.  It’s the sort of thing that had me reminiscing all those speed garage comps that flooded the States a decade ago, but never could manage the quality control of what was going on in the scene itself.  This would sit perfectly with the likes of Tuff Jam or MJ Cole.

“Zeppelin Nacelle” keeps the momentum moving forward with a driving but not aggro wobble at its core and plenty going on in the mid and high ranges.  Clean and crisp tones press this into a track tailor-made for discerning, loving dancefloors.

“Your Dub Delay” gives the first sinister hint on the album, taking a lower-midrange and echoing vocal and throwing it out over a more dubstep-oriented rhythm track than elsewhere on the release.  When the vocal line drifts in at around two minutes in, Blasta builds the tension until the first real drop kicks in, and we’re on from there.  I’d classify this as the pop-club number on The Incredible Adventures, and while the track is a bit too maudlin for me to give it a full thumbs-up, I will give credit where it’s due to the lyric “I could be your dub delay, feeding back every word you say” . . . clever!  Could you ever really be mad at a girl that got that reference though?  I don’t think I could.

The last third of the album serves as an exercise in demonstrating Blasta’s ability to, much like the aforementioned Silkie album, continually tie the influences of post-hardcore, pre-techstep era of drum n bass through the UK Garage/2-step movement and into the present-future of dubstep  While so many former junglists are trading in their amens for wobbles, tracks like “Black Muscatel” and the bouncy space-funk of “Butterflyz Inside U” show that there is still life in the livelier nuances of breaks-oriented music, life that doesn’t need to rely on overtly aggressive razor-yobbles to define a presence.

The album closes out on “Trip 42,” a sublime, downtempo-leaning number drenched in atmospheric horns and filtered guitar that would sound perfectly at home on an Earth or Cookin’ compilation.  The final piece of Kenzolika And Quetzalcoatl’s Adventure, it’s a restful homecoming and an understated confirmation of this album.

Solid and cohesive from beginning to end, similar but still engaging, Blasta has given Argon a release for sitters, standers, and swingers.  I think that’s just about got us all covered, doesn’t it?

Dub techno’s resurfacing in the last couple of years has been a welcome counterpoint to the over-the-top arpeggios of the decade-plus “progressive” house stranglehold on most dancefloors and the as-of-late DOA minimal techno scene.  The life imbued between sparse beats and foggy atmospherics is a refreshing throwback to a time when producers were artists first and businessmen as a last resort.  Given the niche aspect of the genre and the near-zero commercial viability of the sound, both artists and label heads are given the freedom to put an appreciation of the craft first.

Fatih Tuter is one of the newest of the new breed of producers focusing on this sound.  As Dubatech and Cold Form, he’s appeared on such leading netlabels as Cism and Deepindub, and his inclusion on this year’s Selected Moments II compilation from Shoreless undoubtedly served as a much-needed introduction to a bigger audience.

Wide & Shallow, also out on Shoreless in cd-r format, posits Tuter in a similar frame as his compilation companions.  The frozen-glass pads and resigned melancholia of Bvdub;  the simple but structural drum work of Quantec and the more restrained moments of Brendan Moeller;  the high-cloud ambient atmosphere of Anders Peterson’s Relapxych are all available reference points.

Tuter thankfully does not rest on influence or groupthink to distinguish himself.  Given the opportunity to stretch almost an hour out over seven untitled tracks, the producer chooses the artist’s high road , painting strokes of muted dawns on the grayscale dub techno canvas.  While Echospace’s The Coldest Season may be the template for a night lost in a wasteland of tundra, Tuter here provides the dim glow of home just visible through the treeline.

The moments of motion on Wide & Shallow, as evidenced on “Untitled #3″, are generally solitary in their composure, bringing to mind more a sense of introversion and inner-space exploration than hand-holding companionship or crowded-room comraderie.  With an emphasis on restraint and subtlety, the listener strains to the point of exertion to understand, and, in the last moment, falls exhausted into audio-kinetic euphoria.

While there is more than enough dub techno capable of putting a dancefloor through its paces, it is the restrained subtleties on tracks like “Untitled #4″ and “Untitled #6″ that lift Wide & Shallow.  Beatless and coming in at just over four minutes, the shifting, echoing pads and steambath pulses give “#6″ an opportunity to lighten the mood without forcing a physical hand.  “Untitled #7″ returns to gauzy chords and a slow-motion bassline initially, all the while building over its eight minutes with each passage through the loop cycle into something of a final flight through the aurora.

Tuter, in all his guises, is a name to watch, as is Shoreless.  With the furtherance of bass culture’s cross-genre pollinations, an understanding and appreciation of how to use works like Wide & Shallow in both static and ecstatic environments should become less of a specialist notion.  Discerning selectors looking for atmosphere on that third or fourth deck in the mix have known this for quite some time.  It will be continued releases like Wide & Shallow that guide a return to the end of the night, instead of the standard closing-time crash and burn.

Last year, Petter Friberg absolutely floored me with the sheer stunning beauty of Optical Flow.  As is usually the case with albums of that quality, I was quick to get it into the hands of the few discerning souls I knew who’d have an appreciation for the austere minimalist constructions Friberg’s been producing for quite some time now.  The result, each and every time, was of open-jawed awe.

Optical Flow was my favorite album of the year from the moment I heard it, and I’m sure no other album received so many front-to-back listens as it did, in as many different environments, in as many different moods.  It was, and remains, perfect.

One of those friends I’d passed last year’s release on to let me know Friberg was back with Laponia. currently out on netlabel Thinner.  I didn’t even know he had a new one on the way, so it was a greatly appreciate return of the favor.  From the very first quavering notes, it is clear that this new Motionfield album is picking up where Optical Flow left off.  That’s an important distinction, because it is not “more of the same” here  - it’s a progression and maturity of a sound that I wasn’t sure could get any more of either.

Throughout the album, sounds of daybreak dawns and distant whoops and chirps filter through a pastoral gauze of maternal comfort.  Track three, “Kebnekaise”, is the first to feature percussive rhythm, and what is present dances lightly on the periphery for, at first, only a short amount of time, echoing and delaying with a mid-stereo field drumskin tap drawing it together, until the rhythm posits itself in a central but unobtrusive place among the soundwash.

I found myself drawing comparisons to the more ambient work of Robin Guthrie, specifically the Mysterious Skin soundtrack, or a much more restrained Boards of Canada, but as with most things of this calibre, it’s best not to dwell too long on the juxtapositions and references.  Instead, I kept turning the volume up - not to overcome some production shortcoming, but to dive deeper into the layers Friberg has built his work on.  Each decibel increased seemed to provide a new subaqueous creature, visible only in the auroral halo of the imagination.

Stark, honest, intelligent, emotive - this is an album that provides an aural canvas on which to transcend humanist ideas of beauty to instead examine the greater surround.  That is, it is a truly ambient album.

Architeq’s Birds of Prey ep was killer but it was an ep.  Everything else happened.

I didn’t even know there was a full-length coming out, but Gold & Green is due out on Tirk shortly, if not already.  I’ve heard “Krakatoa” and “Spinning Plates” and it’s #1 of the year so far.  I haven’t been this excited to hear fourteen tracks since Paul Westerberg.