Best Tracks of 2013: 25-1

After yesterday’s ramble on the nature of year-end lists, we’ll keep this one short and to the point. For all that such lists are worth, here are White Noise’s 25 favourite tracks of 2013.

25: The Mole – Lockdown Party (DJ Sprinkles Crossfaderama) [EP Review]

 

DJ Sprinkles had a fantastic year, scoring one of the year’s best mixes as well as a brilliant remix package – and the legendary academic / DJ also found time to knock out one of the year’s very best tracks. If you play this out in a set Sprinkles does the work for you: leaning on the EQs, filters and crossfader, splicing in samples here and there, and on the dancefloors this one brought dancers together like no other.

24: A Made Up Sound – Ahead [EP Review]

AMUS’ unhinged Ahead is an unsettling track. It’s not the lurking threat of the looped vocals or the splintered beats, but rather the track’s utter disregard for dance music convention which makes for such a jarring listen. But from the broken remains of melodic hooks and a 4/4 AMUS builds something brave and new, amazing and perplexing the listener in equal measure.

23: Romare – Hey Now (When I Give You All My Lovin’) [EP Review]

 

At just over two minutes, the closer to Romare’s second EP is by a long way the shortest track on this list, and could easily be considered a jazzy outro to the more substantial meat on the release. Yet something about that Nina Simone sample and the languid piano gives this track an edge, making for a soupy soul number which is more than just an interlude. When the seedy trumpet bursts through the track’s second half the effect is unparalleled, edging us towards the repeat button every time.

22: HNNY – Mys [EP Review]

Scandinavian retroist HNNY doesn’t receive a whole lot of praise in music press. Perhaps his tracks lean too heavily on nostalgia, and here on Mys the beat pattern is more than a little functional. But to disregard him would be to ignore the beautiful simplicity of his music: it may not wear cutting-edge techniques but it has soul in spades. Mys is a glorious track, sensuous vocal cries looped over a thundering bass bounce, perfect for an ear-catching opener or a mid-set slow jam.

21: Innershades – That Girl [EP Review]

Our favourite new producer of 2013 burst out of nowhere on That Girl, a Dancemania-indebted track with menacing synths and a mighty kick-drum. The tracks’ simple structure and rough muscle made it a dancefloor bomb every time, showing just how much can be done with a few perfectly-tuned elements.

20: Chesus – Special [EP Review]

Editing a disco track into a filtered house cut is the oldest trick in the book – but perhaps the reason so many producers give it a shot is because when done well, the blend of euphoric soul and house muscle has an effect like little else. The addictive vocal of Special is honey to the ears, while those glorious strings feel like a spiritual successor to New For U.

19: FCL – It’s You (San Soda’s Panorama Bar Acca Version)

It’s practically just a vocal, yet it’s not surprising that FCL’s It’s You attracted so much attention over the last year. In a year of industrial sounds and lofi aesthetics this track provided a dose of grace and soul, perfect to open a set or mix over more tougher jams.

18: Jessy Lanza – Keep Moving [LP Review]

Jessy Lanza’s debut on Hyperdub was one of the year’s best pop records, and the disco-indebted Keep Moving was an essential highlight. Lanza’s hook’s are urgent and catchy, while the combination of guitar licks, synth stabs and an elastic bassline make for a seductive package indeed.

17: June – Face This (Deep House Mix)

In terms of nostalgic house exercises, this low-slung workout had it all: the looped ‘house’ vocal, the meandering bass bounce, the delectable acid line. House music at its best, pure and simple.

16: Florian Kupfer – Feelin

The relatively unknown Kupfer gave L.I.E.S. its first anthem on Feelin, an addictive vocal sugar-coating lush synthwork, clattering drums and a a meaty bassline.

15: Nils Frahm – Says

 

Since my friend described listening to this track as ‘like discovering a new world in an underwater ice cave using sonar’ I haven’t really been able to think about it any other way. On Frahm’s triumphant Spaces LP, Says stood out for its majesty and subtlety, fragile piano notes accompanying a glistening arpeggio. The track’s slow build is utterly consuming: by the time you get to that late-game key change you’ll already be lost.

14: Roly Porter – Cloud [LP Review]

The grand opening to Roly Porter’s cosmic exploration was a powerful force: vocals looped beyond humanity, alloyed to a stammering beat pattern and the glacial movement of string figures beyond.

13: Paul Woolford – Untitled [EP Review]

Paul Woolford owned this year. Under his Special Request guise he released the hardcore revival’s most brilliant record, and then on this one-off for Hotflush he issued a worthy successor to 2006's smash Erotic Discourse. The honeyed vocals and anthemic piano line might prove cheesy in other contexts, but married to Woolford’s brawny drums they’re just perfect. One of the few Ibiza anthems that genuinely deserved play beyond the island’s borders.

12: Murat Tepeli – Forever (Prosumer’s Hold Me Touch Me Remix)

 

Everything came together perfectly on Prosumer’s remix of long-time collaborator Murat Tepeli. The piano line is positively venomous, while the soaring vocal and tight beat patterns open the door to the dark side of euphoria.

11: Pev – Livity [EP Review]

If there’s one producer who released more great tracks than any other this year, Pev was he. Across two collaborative EPs and a solo outing, the Bristolian was on finer form than ever, and the combination of the manic, queasy bassline and those jangling keys on Livity is utterly unforgettable.

10: Floorplan – Never Grow Old [LP Review]

The relationship between religion and dance music in Robert Hood’s music is the subject of frequent discourse, partly of its rarity – yet he’s on to something: the ability of the two to allow a person to transcend the physical, to make a group unite and rejoice, is a striking similarity. Nowhere is Hood more likely to make you believe than on Never Grow Old, an Aretha-sampling beast stitching that achingly soulful vocal onto an adamantine 4/4 skeleton.

9: Special Request – Mindwash [LP Review]

Paul Woolford’s attitude towards jungle and hardcore is striking because of his ability to modernise these sounds rather than just ape them. Mindwash is an unhinged trip whose maniacal bassline never sits still, sounding remarkably current even over a field of breaks ripped right out of a 90s textbook.

8: Damiano von Erckert – Hollywood [LP Review]

 

The ava label-head’s debut solo album was a glorious journey through the sounds of the past, and it was his pitch-perfect disco number that got us most excited. Perhaps Hollywood could have been made fifteen years ago, but it sounds as brilliant now as it would have back then. Georgia Anne Muldrow gives a phenomenal vocal performance over Erckert’s production dripping with funk: a utterly timeless collaboration.

7: Levon Vincent - ???

Levon took us back with this one: never had he sounded so urgent and floor-focused, conjuring the year’s most distinctive bassline and treating it with his gritty warehouse stylings and a game-changing synth to close.

6: DJ Rashad – Let It Go [EP Review]

Rashad ascended to footwork royalty this year thanks to a series of country- and genre-spanning releases, but even on his ace album he couldn’t quite top Let It Go. The vulnerability on display is almost unheard of in juke’s macho culture, as delicate strings falter under a desperate vocal plea. Yet even when he gets all emotional, Rashad never forgets his roots, and the stammering breaks added a vital urgency to the heart-tugging vocal cuts.

5: Omar S – The Shit Baby [LP Review]

Another year, and Detroit’s unstoppable Omar S still plays no one’s game but his own. This grammatically-challenged cut was as simple as Omar gets: the percussion is all groove: skipping snares, a solid kick and a descending bassline. But the inclusion of D. Taylor’s improvised piano takes this track into the stratosphere, offering a euphoric lead sure to get the crowd beaming as well as dancing.

4: Sophie – Bipp [EP Review]

I can make you feel better! The kind of track that makes a dance journalist use an exclamation mark is rare indeed, but it’s impossible to not get excited listening to Sophie’s second excellent release. Bipp is a breed of inverted pop, its saccharine vocal tied unexpectedly to pops, fizzes and jittery, drumless synths. On paper it sounds terrible, but a single listen would reassure any listener: Bipp is one of the year’s most brilliant, bizarre tracks, and is absolutely impossible to stop listening to.

3: Tessela – Hackney Parrot [EP Review]

If this was a list of the year’s ‘biggest’ tracks, Hackney Parrot would have no competition for the top spot. There are few tunes that make dancers stop in their tracks, but time and again Hackney Parrot destroyed dancefloors, its monstrous drop driving dancers into a frenzy. The stuttering breaks, the syrup-thick synth notes, that abrupt vocal hook: the ‘parrot is pure gold, and it’s going to be tough for Tessela to top.

2: Oneohtrix Point Never – Chrome Country

When I first heard this track I was walking through an airport. The infinite escalators, miles of plate glass and silenced urgency of travellers made for a stunning mental music video, and the song evoked a reverie of the essential beauty of human interaction even in our involved, over-stimulated age. Coming at the end of Daniel Lopatin’s brilliant new album, Chrome Country is a hymn for the digital age, its synthetic choirs frayed by electronic processing, its blissful strings and keys sometimes drowned by a swooning ambient wash. The track’s conclusion introduces a majestic organ – never before has Lopatin’s music sounded so optimistic, so downright heavenly. But we’re right there with him.

1: Palms Trax – Equation [EP Review]

At its best, house music is very simple. Granted, there are many producers who toy with complex rhythmic and melodic structures to great effect, but the old adage ‘gotta have house music’ was extolling something accessible, something universal. Palms Trax’ Equation wears its influences on its sleeve: eschewing the current lofi trend for the polished new-age sound of the Burrell Brothers and Nu Groove. Yet Equation easily transcends its retro trappings: its perfect counterpoint of soaring synths and rolling bassline inviting everyone, young and old, cool and lame, to get on the ‘floor and throw some shapes. No track in 2013 made us want to get up and dance as much as Equation, and for that simple reason, it tops our list.

Best of 2013:

* Best Labels of 2013

* Best EPs of 2013
* Best Tracks: 85-26
* Best Tracks: 25-1

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Will Hardcore Ever Die? Techno's Resurrection of the Breakbeat

Hardcore will never die – we’ve all heard the old adage. Except over the last ten years, hardcore did kind of die. The breakbeat, once supreme champion of dancefloor percussion, just wasn’t cool anymore. Meanwhile all the genres that worshipped at the altar of these chopped funk breaks: drum’n’bass, jungle and hardcore, began to stagnate, left to the die-hards with their perma-gurns as the school of the new millennium turned to grime, garage and dubstep, or indeed back to the worthy institutions of house and techno. The use of breakbeats within hip hop has a long history and continues to bear fruit, but it’s only recently that the percussive style has seen a re-emergence in the dance sphere.

For years the breakbeat scenes haven’t seen much in the way of progress, the last notable exception being DnB’s Autonomic phase spearheaded by the likes of Instra:Mental and dBridge. Yet listen closely and the winds are changing: there has been a sharp increase in the use of breakbeats in modern dance music in 2013, whether they appear as retro ornaments or something altogether newer: conventional drum loops twisted, distorted and recontextualised into fresh shapes. While others have charted the re-emergence of new forms of drum and bass, this article will explore the practitioners who are recontextualising breakbeats at slower tempos, in techno and beyond. 

Paul Woolford - Mindwash

One of the men at the heart of this revival (and the inspiration for this article) is none other than man of the moment Paul Woolford, who is currently attracting all the right attention with the rugged productions of his Special Request moniker. With a name that references (perhaps even mourns) the pirate radio stations that birthed his sound, Woolford’s Special Request tracks are ferocious club monsters, where familiar breaks are squashed into tough technoid forms, glorifying hollow, compressed kicks and elastic breakbeat loops. Yet Woolford’s compositions are not just throwback. On each of his celebrated white label releases (along with an ace recent EP for Houndstooth), he adds a distinct flavour to the gritty soundcraft, keeping it personal and modern. For example, while the superb Mindwash may give way to a tear-streaked breakdown of breathy vocals and eternal synths in pure 90s style, it has at its core the restless pursuit of a maniacally sinuous melodic line which would only be heard this decade.

Pev – Aztec Chant

As most of the music that heavily used breakbeats hovered around the 160bpm mark, some of the more interesting re-appropriations of the beats have come from artists who have slowed them down. Livity Sound head-honcho Pev (formerly Peverelist) is one of the UK scene’s leading lights at the moment, honing an utterly unique style of techno which incorporates various elements of the UK’s hardcore and dubstep lineage. Hear on this year’s Aztec Chant how the breakbeat is just one of the track’s percussive components, nestled amidst panning melodics and frayed hi-hats, looping like a broken record until it finally takes centre stage for the track’s final two minutes. Yet it is not just scene stalwarts who are reclaiming the breakbeat: A Sagittariun, one of the country’s more intriguing new techno producers, constructs a moody scifi soundfield on his stylish Eye Against Eye, only for a slo-mo breakbeat to steal the scene, a perfect fit for the slick Detroit atmospherics.

DJ Haus – Cold As Ice

It’s not just individual producers who are looking to reclaim the hardcore sound: certain labels seem particularly intent on pushing the 90s revival. Chief among them is DJ Haus’ inimitable Unknown To The Unknown, who topped our list of 2012’s best labels. Besides a hilarious Youtube channel and bizzare cover-art, DJ Haus has used UTTU to resurrect some of dance music’s less popular genres, from electro to bassline garage. Proving that these old styles have life in them yet, some of UTTU’s breakbeat experiments have been pure gold: one need only look as far as Haus’ own Cold As Ice for an achingly cool lesson in hardcore, replete with a tacky synth breakdown which I wouldn’t have any other way. Elsewhere on the label, Lords Of Midnite’s excellent Drown In Ur Love EP took the breakbeat on a scifi odyssey for its epic analog title jam.

Andy Stott – Up The Box

We’ve seen a clear renewal of interest in the noble breakbeat, with a variety of artists co-opting those breakneck rhythms to their own ends. Yet outside of the dancefloor exists another group of hardcore operators, dealing with decay and disintegration, resulting in what is perhaps the most fascinating material that the breakbeat has to offer today. These artists can be loosely grouped around the experimental Modern Love and PAN imprints, the former’s Andy Stott being a perfect example. The formidable Up The Box, from his ace 2012 album Luxury Problems, is a semi-experimental piece which loops a locked breakbeat, jamming like machinery in a slowly building gale of static noise. After three minutes it drops away, and after a few atmospheric shifts returns with a phenomenal compressed kick in toe, an exhilarating fusion of jungle and techno that combines the tough distortion of each without even a moment’s relief. It may also be worth noting the possibility of Stott’s involvement in Modern Love’s ultra-limited Unknown / Hate project, a purist exercise in pitch-black junglism which yielded uncompromisingly destructive club tracks.

Demdike Stare - Collision

Further into the world of experimentation one comes across Demdike Stare’s recent Testpressing series, also out on Modern Love. Drawing on a profound knowledge of jungle, hardcore and noise, Collision saw the pair at their rawest yet, building four minutes of seething, heatsick noise around a bed of jammed, dysfunctional breakbeats. While Demdike turned jungle to noise, PAN’s Lee Gamble used his superb Diversions 1994-1996 to draw out the ambience of these tracks, dissolving breakbeats in the faded ambience of musical recall, turning the raves of the 90s into the incoherent, mesmerising sequences which now exist only in our memories. In a fitting parallel, a similar trick was pulled off by Anthony Naples on his remix of Special Request’s Mindwash, casting the legend of hardcore beneath the gauze of memory, eroded by time, subject to dissolution and fragmentation. These experimental re-appropriations of breakbeats treat the drum pattern as an artefact of its own time, and through recontextualising the familiar drum loop they pose questions about evolving musical trends and the unreliable nature of memory itself.

Tessela – Hackney Parrot

Before this article disintegrates, weighed down by the fragility of its pseudo-philosophical musings, it’s worth drawing attention to how current, how big these modern breakbeat iterations can also sound. On the following playlist you’ll hear a selection of some of the sounds discussed above, but also some genuinely innovative use of the classic drumloop – DJ Rashad’s minor masterpiece, the emotive Let It Go, which dissects breakbeats with the finesse of a surgeon, or Clouds’ ode to the rave thump on the monumental Future 1. Yet at the same time we have Dance’s curious Still, a ghostly slo-jam that leaves the breakbeat wholly intact, or Shed’s nuanced second outing as EQD, which ranks among the producers best work to date. Then there’s Tessela’s phenomenal Hackney Parrot, doubtless one of 2013’s most memorable anthems, guaranteed to get the crowd moving even if the dancers don’t know their breakbeat from their steak frites.

The lasting impression of this survey is the extraordinary versatility of this simple set of drum loops, which twenty years on are still being used and abused in the most fascinating, exhilarating fashions. Not only are artists continuing to insert breakbeats into showstopping underground hits, but the passage of time has permitted an artistic re-appraisal, with producers subjecting the drums to the decay of memory and time in a way which opens entirely new avenues of musical possibility. Will hardcore ever die? It’s up to the artists, but on the strength of the scene’s ability to appropriate and re-integrate artefacts of our musical past in ever-more innovative ways, it looks set to survive for a long while yet.

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Playlist

Tracklist:

DJ Rashad – Let It Go

A Sagittariun – Eye Against Eye

EQD – EQD 002B (04)

Clouds – Future 1
Point G - Braka

Special Request – Broken Dreams
Ramadanman - Don't Change For Me

Pangaea – Razz

Unknown / Hate – Human Resources
Deadboy - Nova

Special Request – Mindwash (Anthony Naples Eternal Mix)
Lowout - LAS

Dance – Still
Simoncino - Happy (DJ Sotofett Slow Jungle Trippin')

If you want more, check out Boomkat's ace series of playlists on 14tracks.

October Roundup 2013

It always seems to be autumn when the best tunes all start to come out at once. October's yield has been bountiful, and here WN collects the best of the best new releases. Kicking off with our favourite jam of the month, Palms Trax's pitch-perfect Equation, this playlist will take you through blistering euphoria and deeper house meditations, analogue experiments and icy electro, locked-machinery techno and vocal-fed experimental abstraction. It's all here, so why wait? Enjoy!

Tracklist:

Palms Trax - Equation [EP Review]

R-Zone - Rebecca In The Hall [EP Review]

Crystal & S. Koshi - Break The Dawn

Greymatter & KRL - A World Without Love

Doc Daneeka - Walk On In feat. Ratcatcher

Borrowed Identity - Leave Your Life

Raw M.T. - Walkman Is Dead
Marquis Hawkes - Get Yo Ass Off My Grass

SE62 - True Force

Owiny Sigoma Band - Nyiduonge Drums

Lumigraph - Yacht Cruiser

Dopplereffekt - Gene Silencing [EP Review]

Randomer - Bring

Joe - Slope

Objekt - Agnes Demise

Special Request - Soundboy Killer [LP Review]

Tessela - Horizon [EP Review]

DJ Rashad - Every Day Of My Life feat. DJ Phil

Dense & Pika - Colt

Mala - Como Como (Theo Parrish Remix)

Roly Porter - Cloud

And here are a few of our other monthly picks that couldn't be found on Youtube:

Simoncino - Tape I (EP Review) [Second clip]

Alden Tyrell - Somehouse (Single Review) [First Clip]

Tuff Sherm - Followfarming

Til next month, enjoy the tunes!

Special Request - Soul Music

Label: Houndstooth

Under his own name, Paul Woolford has proven himself a gifted producer working in the techno mould. From 2006’s pitch-black Erotic Discourse to this year’s summer anthem Untitled by way of mutant Psychatron collaboration Stolen, Woolford is responsible for an enviable catalogue of rugged club hits. Yet it was when he first donned his pirate radio-homage moniker Special Request that Woolford’s music really came into a league of its own. Prefiguring the current hardcore revival, the Special Request canon harked back to the raucous 90s UK scene that birthed hardcore and jungle, setting these familiar sounds – ricocheting breakbeats, undulating bass sweeps – into crushed technoid moulds. As much a work of tribute as of innovation, the success of early Special Request tracks (here included in a second bonus disc) was due to Woolford’s eminent ability to channel the period’s reckless abandon, curating a thrilling confluence between past and present sounds which made for some of the last few years’ most essential listening.

Now Woolford introduces his most complete Special Request statement to date in the form of the sublime Soul Music, an album whose title hints at Woolford’s emotional relationship to this music. A dedication to the unsung heroes of pirate radio, this music harks back to a sound which was the foundation of almost all contemporary UK dance, giving birth to the energy, dread, and south London atmospherics that can be heard today in garage, dubstep and grime. Despite its wild pace, Soul Music is evidently a labour of love, as Woolford works within a rough style, referencing illicit radio by arming himself with backspins and MC shoutouts, and even going so far as to sample his own sounds as heard through an FM transmitter. It works brilliantly: a complete statement which at once elegises, lionises, and ultimately reinvigorates the hardcore sound Woolford loves so much.

 

Album Clips

For those looking for the savage hybrids that cemented early Special Request classics such as Lolita (Warehouse Mix) and Mindwash, Soul Music will not disappoint. Soundboy Killer opens with a tongue-in-cheek MC interruption, ‘can you please clear the stage, all you’re doing is jumping the records and we can’t have a good time’, which opens into an explosive hybrid of gender-shifted vocals, gunshots and staggered breakbeat cuts. Throughout, Woolford’s club numbers are bursting with ideas and energy: while Body Armour offers the patient swagger of jackhammer bass hits and cocked pistols, Black Ops seethes over tunnelling filtered synthwork and epileptic break-science.

Yet on one level, we already knew that Woolford could reconfigure these hardcore sounds with the requisite power and grit. As a result some of Soul Music’s most interesting pieces are where he departs from the full-throttle momentum of those earlier releases. Opener Forbidden is a sterling example, as those same breakbeats and growling bass burrow deeper into the mix, adorned by shimmering harp notes and atmosphere to spare. Follow-up Undead is just as intriguing, where it sounds like Untitled’s catchy piano refrain got lost in Special Request’s parallel universe, a treasure whose light filters up from the deep.

While it may have more in common with some of the pacier numbers, third cut Cold Blooded is equally intriguing: like Hessle Audio gone hardcore, its off-kilter beat pattern and insistent melodics make for a powerful trip where Woolford flaunts his sonic inventiveness. This stylistic restlessness is a joy, and evident throughout the album: Capsules filters into existence through deconstruction, as if someone was tuning a radio (achieved with some remarkable panning), while final cut Descent is a curveball of detuned piano notes driven to madness, cannibalised by washes of flickering static.

The album is accompanied by a disc of previous Special Request releases and remixes, and as a result Woolford’s dedication to his hardcore sound palette may fatigue the listener after almost two and a half hours. Yet the quality of these compositions cannot be disputed. It’s a stunningly consistent package, and also a joy to finally get digital versions of the likes of Woolford’s Hackney Parrot VIP or his ace Lana Del Ray remix Ride, among the many gems nestled on the second disc. Soul Music may be composed of songs that aim for the jugular and don’t let go, but the reverence for the source material means that a genuine emotional core glows beneath the brain-frying percussive acrobatics. It’s an astonishing accomplishment, and if this is a window into Woolford’s soul, we might only hope that he continues to bare it well into the future.

9/10
Read this review in context at Inverted Audio

June / July Roundup 2013

2013 is shaping up to be the best year for dance music since White Noise began, and this summer has been incredibly exciting, particularly on the album front. To pay credit to the best of the best, here's a selection of our favourite tunes from the last couple of months, all organised in an easy Youtube playlist. The list comprises instant classics and lesser-known works, venturing from big-room bangers to techno rollers, finishing off with a satisfying selection of synthy noodlings. Enjoy!

Tracklist:

Sophie - Bipp [Single Review]

Paul Woolford - Untitled

Ikonika - Beach Mode (Keep It Simple) [Album Review]

Simian Mobile Disco & Bicep - Sacrifice

Todd Terje - Strandbar (Disko Version) [EP Review]

Floorplan - Never Grow Old [Album Review]

Midland - Archive01

Alden Tyrell & Gerd - Luv Thang

Walton - Need To Feel [Album Review]

Special Request - Broken Dreams [EP Review]

Zomby - Memories [Album Review]

Machinedrum - Eyesdontlie

DJ Rashad - I Don't Give A Fuck

Lords of Midnite - Drown In Ur Love

June - Face This (Deep House Mix)

Tuff Sherm - Burglar Loops

The Mole - Lockdown Party (DJ Sprinkles Crossfaderama) [EP Review]

Gerry Read - Crave [EP Review]

Claws For? - Profumo

Octo Octa - Come Closer [Album Review]

Jon Hopkins - Breathe This Air [Album Review]

Boards of Canada - New Seeds [Album Review]

Holden - Renata

Forest Swords - The Weight Of Gold

Fuewa - Blhok [EP Review]

And the one that's not on Youtube:

Guy Andrews - Tapes [EP Review]

Special Request - Hardcore

Label: Houndstooth

After the astounding success of his viciously compelling 2006 single Erotic Discourse, Paul Woolford somewhat disappeared from view. While the producer continued to work, notably issuing 2011’s excellent Stolen collaboration with Psychatron, it wasn’t until Woolford donned his Special Request guise last year that the world really started paying attention. Across a series of four self-released, vinyl-only singles, Special Request evoked the crushed, blistering power of the warehouse rave through a modernisation of classic jungle and DnB templates. With standout tracks Lolita and Mindwash, Woolford has decimated many of the UK’s discerning dancefloors over the last year, and now for the first time he turns to the rising star of Fabric-affiliated label Houndstooth to issue his fullest Special Request excursion to date.

Woolford offers two original cuts here, opening the EP with the hefty stomp of Wall To Wall. All the Special Request trademarks are here: the sunken kick compressed to within an inch of its life alongside a stark, brutal percussive field, all mixed with a healthy dose of distortion. The clipped, syncopated vocal cuts and swandiving bass hits towards the close cap off a tune of powerfully destructive proportions, yet the track is still somehow outshone by Woolford’s other offering, the nasty pirate-radio homage of Broken Dreams. Here rebounding bass notes underpin a mutating array of surgical break cuts, resulting in a tune that conjures the breathless energy of the UK’s hardcore continuum at its best without ever sounding like pastiche. The energy just lets up once, as the rhythm is interrupted by a blissed-out breather of a female vocal, serving to prepare the listener and the ‘floor for another three minutes of mayhem.

So far, this is what we’ve come to expect from Special Request; a pair of formidable excursions into breakbeat science, even if this is indeed an uncommonly fine pair. Yet this is where Houndstooth’s expert guiding voice makes itself heard, as the two original cuts are backed by a superb pair of remixes every bit as fascinating as Woolford’s original pieces. Firstly Brooklyn house youngster Anthony Naples takes on Mindwash in his ‘Eternal Mix’, an appropriately titled rework that looks at hardcore through a thick gauze of nostalgia and deterioration, sapping the strength of Woolford’s breaks and layering mournful pads and vocal clips over the top. It’s a brilliant idea, and more than anything proves Naples’ capabilities outside of the house mould, but one can’t help but feel that the track is over far too soon, disappointingly fading out after only three minutes.

The second choice of remixer is just as inspired, as Houndstooth invites jungle distortionist Lee Gamble to take on the unreleased Capsules. This beautifully patient rework builds a detailed field of ambience, both glossy and desiccated, rounding off a powerhouse EP on a sublimely atmospheric, introspective note. Woolford seems unstoppable at the moment, as his junglist tendencies rule the underground while his latest Hotflush release Untitled is set to take over Ibiza. What Houndstooth have drawn from him is another stellar addition to the Special Request canon and an exceptional pair of remixes, a package that rejoices in the power of real ‘ardcore while simultaneously mourning its loss.

8/10