Deft 1s

Deft - Always Greener EP
WOTNOT MUSIC - WOT 015 (24th March 2014)

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/16791-emeralds/

Despite refusing to stick to a single genre, Deft is one of those immediately recognisable producers, which is nice because it means we don’t have to waste any time comparing him to anyone else. 2013 saw the Croydon man skilfully hopping from headphone to dance styles, often within a track, his signature blend of cinematic soundscapes and crisp, intricate percussion covering hip-hop, house, and ambient. What’s more, his noteworthy contributions to the burgeoning UK footwork scene means the young producer can now count Mark Pritchard, DJ Shadow and Rockwell among his biggest fans, and boy does this boy have fans, check this Bandcamp review of his Project Mooncircle EP Voight Kampff:

Anything this magician puts out has a pretty good chance of getting you pregnant right in the good old music hole.

Says it all really.

Emeralds opens with bubbling synths, building into epic space-station jungle juke with haunting toplines and heart-shaking bass. Cavernous electronic atmospheres introduce A Little Kiss, which interleaves percussion and stuttering bass with the incredible attention to detail we’ve come to know and love.

Octavia is a feisty younger sister to Loqux & Past, the Maya Jane Coles-championed hit from his Space Hardware EP; warm, headnod house joined by a SHOWER bass-line that roundhouse kicks its older sibling in the face for hogging the limelight. Maintaining the hyper vibes, Perky couples spiky footwork beats with slowly-evolving chords creating euphoric rises and falls, leading perfectly to the epic reflection of closing interlude On The Other Side.

All in all, Deft is an artist who continues to develop in awesome and interesting ways, increasingly able to balance striking dance music with immersive ambience. And finding his path with similarly ambitious labels like WotNot, there’s a not-too-distant future where Deft no longer worries that it’s always greener on the other side.

http://deftmusic.com
http://facebook.com/deftmusic
http://twitter.com/deft_1
http://wotnot.tv

Deft - Emeralds (WOT015)

Nomark Selects, Vol. 1

Babou the Dog

Give it some credit. Only made it in 2 days so it definitely needs mixed more.

Trial By Fire

Etrigan Benezar - Random walk II

One Of Us

Kryptic Minds - Six Degrees

out now on Mad Lab!

stream/download: http://smarturl.it/madzachbelittle

this is the first track from the new studio and also marks the launch of my own label imprint: Mad Lab

artwork by @samuelforrestalderson

BUY WAV/MP3

Belittle No One

Out 1/26 on Mad Lab

stream/download: http://smarturl.it/mzthevisitor

upcoming shows: www.madzach.com/shows

artwork by Ruby Ballesteros

The Visitor

From the album Ital Tek - Outland (out 1st May 2020 on Planet Mu)
http://smarturl.it/ItalTekOutland

Ital Tek (a.k.a. Alan Myson) returns to Planet Mu with his sixth album ‘Outland‘.

The album was written during a period of new beginnings following a move out of the city to a quieter space and the birth of his first child. During this time of self-imposed isolation Alan recorded a huge amount of source material and spent weeks and months sitting up at night with his newborn, listening back and making notes on how the new record should take form, focusing and developing ideas to shape this lean ten-track album.

Alan talks of the record being a collaboration between two parts of himself, something that definitely comes across as the album unfolds. Textures are something Alan excels at and on his last album, the largely beatless ‘Bodied’, it felt as if he was building a new sound-world. On ‘Outland’ he expands upon this. The album brings together the extremes of Alan’s sound, contrasting roughened bass and beats with starker more detailed atmospheres and emotions.

The most beat-driven song here is ‘Deadhead’, with its gnarled bouncing bass, angular distorted melodies and cavernous textures. On tracks like ‘Bladed Terrain’ the contrasts are even more defined with buzzing drones and razor sharp drums plunging into a grainy fog, giving the track a dramatic 3D feel. Then there are the stop-start pauses of ‘Leaving The Grid’, where the song evaporates into space before reemerging with shuddering rhythms and ghostly textures. Melodies crawl around these tracks as if they’re just waking up, as heard on the atmospheric ‘Angel In Ruin’.

The sleep-deprived fraying of the senses became Alan’s routine and one which he says gave him a renewed creative energy; half-asleep, working through the night, and then into the daytime super-focused but exhausted. Prone to audio hallucinations whilst writing the album, he aimed to capture these distortions in his perception of pitch and time, and you can hear these effects interpreted on tracks like ‘Endless’ and ‘Open Heart’ as melodies phase and slip out of time like an emotional Doppler effect. This is also true of the soaring atonal synths at the peak of ‘Diamond Child’, which feel like the aural equivalent of eye floaters. 

These intuitive feelings and functions are a difficult thing to capture in sound, but Alan manages it beautifully and always makes the result feel warm and adventurous, heartfelt and epic.

Outland

Ital Tek - Deadhead

Surface Tension: II

Explorer

Deft & Lewis James - Teleporter
B4 Music - B4M003
Format: Digital
Released: 26th March 2021

Buy & Stream: http://sq.lnk.to/B4M003_

01. Teleporter
02. Peepo
03. Octo
04. Wolf 504 b

'Teleporter’ is the new joint EP from Deft & Lewis James; a natural pairing of minds for a project that has been long in the making. Both have indirectly crossed paths via separate releases and collabs on Exit Records and 1985 Music, and now come together on Deft’s own B4 Music.

Both artists are well versed in creating a balanced combination of atmospheric soundscapes, heavy sound design and emotively driven electronic music (evident in their last releases for 20/20 LDN / Hooversound and Exit / Astrophonica respectively), which ’Teleporter’ does not fall short on.

With varying tempos and paces, the EP dips into new territories that both have adapted and developed to make their own. Taking influence from their already familiar backgrounds in Bass, Footwork, DnB, Hip Hop / Beats, the result is four ominously threatening, sub heavy dance floor cuts, uncompromising in mood, tone and aggression.

Title track ‘Teleporter’ comes in at 128bpm with echos of the 140 sound, and demonstrates the impact of a single note sub-bass line, drums and a frantic melodic hook; distorted, dirty and fierce.

Carrying through the fraught melodic hook energy is ‘Peepo’; a playfully chaotic half-time/beats stomper, driven with booming 808’s layered with precise and outlandish sound design.

‘Octo’ is the 170bpm roller of the release, a slight breather from the previous tracks that progressively builds tension and apprehension via its infectious percussion loop, haunting & hypnotic melodics and driving sub drones.

‘Wolf 504 b’; dystopian melodics and soundscapes drift and crescendo over slamming drums and a scowling, distorted bassline, bringing this collaborative effort to an enigmatic close.

’Teleporter’ is released 26th March 2021

All tracks written, produced and mixed by Yip Wong & Lewis James
Artwork by Shaun Lodestar
Mastered by Subvert Mastering
Distributed by Sequence

Ital Tek - Deadhead

Planet Mu Records