Sabre - Morning Worship

Label: Royal Oak

While anyone with more than a moment to spare for dance music would quickly dismiss the meaningless accusation that it’s ‘repetitive’, it’s true that a great deal of contemporary house and techno is lacking a real attention to structure. This isn’t surprising; in clubs the groove takes priority, and the tried and true breakdown-build-release structure still works just as well as it did twenty years ago. But it’s still exciting to hear artists who go a step further, beyond programming a few loops and letting them play out. Where new melodies and rhythms emerge and recede, listeners engage, they are carried by the songcraft as well as the propulsive 4/4.

Enter Portugese duo Sabre, whose two outings in 2013, on WT Records and Argot’s Tasteful Nudes sublabel, hinted at something truly fresh. Their approach was maximalist and full of personality, new sounds at every turn, with a polished exuberance to their analog melodies. After a year of silence the pair make a welcome return on Clone’s reliable Royal Oak imprint, offering more joyous, transportative house music that’s never afraid to add more.

We start at the psychedelic beach party of Cascavel Breeze, seaside samples opening onto a seething synthline and squealing guitars. The energy is palpable, broad splashes of colour adorning the frenetic drums. Vigilante is a rougher cut, percussion and melodies fashioned from wood, with the ever-present growl of the bassline. Final cut Streets of Love | Blaze has an 80s movie vibe, a brooding bassline setting the stage for bright, irregularly slashing synths before a brief coda.

These tracks surround Ghetto Prophet, where all Sabre’s playful melodies are streamlined into a driving centrepiece. Here the soaring synths are barely accompanied by a regular beat for the first half, instead adorned with operatic drum hits every few bars, leading to a grand climax five minutes in. The crescendo might not work in isolation, but given the build it feels earned and jubilant. Really one could say this about most of Sabre’s work: there’s so much going on that it’s almost a miracle it all hangs together so coherently. Their sound is distinctive, generous, and – most of all – fun, a welcome rarity in our time of eyes-down burners and gritty warehouse techno.

7/10

Space Dimension Controller - Correlation #1

Label: Clone Royal Oak

Since his appearance on the scene in 2009, Irish producer Jack Hamill, aka Space Dimension Controller, has attracted attention for both his music and his mythos. The SDC sound, a hardware-fed blend of funk, house and disco, has always been strong, with glittering hits such as The Love Quadrant and Transatlantic Landing Bay studding his early career. More recently, however, Hamill has become just as known for his dedication to the scifi narrative of his full-length releases, with extensive liner notes and even long dramatic monologues on his recent Welcome To Mikrosector-50. If anything, Hamill’s return to Clone is a paring down: his name has received the acronym treatment, the release is narrative-free (there’s barely a press release), and his sound is more stripped and precise than ever before. The Correlation EP, the first in a planned series, is a tasteful and colourful outing, yet unfortunately suffers from a loss of energy around its mid-section.

Opener First Glance is as strong an SDC track as you’ll ever hear, and a winning start to the release. The build-up is slow but promising, as Hamill allows jazzy synth notes to play lightly across a field of detailed percussive textures. It’s not a case of restraint though: when the snares roll and the synthline squeals out there’s a free-jazz energy that bursts through the song’s glossy ambience. After such an exhilarating introduction, listeners will be wanting more, yet the energy level of that first rush is never really revisited. Butterflies of Malaysia is a chilled-out number which ventures uncomfortably close to lounge territory, while even the more compelling drumwork of Familiar Terrain never manages to summon the breathless energy of the opener. It’s a polished track, right down to the dubbed-out piano keys that trace the drums of its second half, but it lacks the opener’s irresistible urgency.

Penultimate cut Chemoreceptor goes for a different style, and is more successful as a result. Lying on a bed of bristling, insectoid scratches, dark bass swipes and the lightest of synth touches carress the white space, unfolding achingly slowly into a sophisticated house burner, using its pent-up anticipation to leave a real impression. Finally the release closes with Petrichor, named for the smell of earth after rain has fallen, which is a short and pretty (albeit insubstantial) dabble in ambient atmospherics and water effects. There’s nothing mind-boggling about SDC’s latest but it’s a classy, at times excellent listen, and a welcome return to the cosmic funk of one of house’s stratospheric citizens.

7/10

Headless Ghost – Frontend

Label: Clone Royal Oak

Clone and its formidable slew of sub-labels have been on fire recently, and for 2013 scene stalwart and impressive chameleon Ripperton takes to the stage under his Headless Ghost guise for a winning release on the analog-leaning Royal Oak imprint. The name of this EP pegs it as a spiritual successor to the producer’s own Backend release on Sthmlaudio, and these three tunes pick up where Backend’s raw, bouncy jackers left off.

Basik Fire / SP3 / Yeah

Opener Basik Fire is the monster here, and is sure to get heavy club play; bright synth whirs and a firm kick lead into a tunnelling bass bounce and filtered vocal loops that conjures a ferocious energy that doesn’t let up over the 7-minute runtime, achieving a perfect balance of light and dark, of bounciness with those intoxicatingly raw sounds. SP3 is a little more unhinged, incisive strings and plenty of sonic details providing a more cerebral, eyes-down affair up until the stuttering kick builds to a feverish synth wail that ups the energy for the track’s final third.

Third cut Yeah is no less impressive, the titular vocal cut intruding cheekily into a bed of swirling synth accents and rattling stabs. A squiggly 303 line makes an unexpected appearance to round off the groove, just one of the many expert additions that keep these tunes fresh and interesting on repeated spins. This is more than house-by-the-numbers, Royal Oak have upped their game once more with a set of rolling house workouts that are sure to stand out in any set, whatever your style.

8/10

See this review in context at Inverted Audio