In 1989, 18 years old, I went on a road trip to Spain with my friend Paul. 

In a typical mega club on the Costa Brava I first heard Lil Louis’ French Kiss and saw what it did on the dance floor. Of course shortly after it blew up to become one of the most iconic tracks in house music ever and topped the charts all over Europe.

I’ve been playing my own remake of French Kiss for years. The folks at Armada thought it should be released and so we dit.
Before everybody (again) tumbles all over one another crying I STOLE this from Lil Louis, rest assured I don’t claim this to be my composition :-)

French Kiss is out now on Armada!

French Kiss

Keep Klimbing

Keep Klimbing (Original Funk Mix)

From Dukwa's new EP 'Matter of Time', out Nov 29: https://lnk.to/GUDU013
Pre-order: https://dukwa.bandcamp.com/album/matter-of-time

Gudu is excited to welcome Dukwa to the label, with a four-track EP of prime time club workouts that are as powerful as they are tender.

Based in Florence, Dukwa made his name in the mid-to-late 2010s with a series of releases on Numbers, Bosconi, Tdsr and his own Dukwa Music label, picking up top tier support from Annie Mac, Ben UFO, Seth Troxler, Pete Tong and more.

The tracks that make up Matter of Time, Dukwa’s debut for Gudu, are intertwined with his hardware-driven live show, and were developed in tandem with recent live performances. The EP’s lead track ‘Prune’ was born from “playing my Nord, trying to find some cool melodies and basses to add to my live show”, but after Dukwa came across the track’s distinctive bassline, it then formed the starting point to an entire new live set.

Likewise, ‘VoX’ stemmed from a happy studio mistake: in Dukwa’s words, “when I recorded the first loop of the bassline, I thought I played with impeccable timing - but it wasn’t!”, but the off-beat live programming turned out to be a revelation, and the track’s wonky feel became its distinctive calling card. Elsewhere, Dukwa describes ‘Jeopardize’ as “his first ‘close-techno’ track” since his 2015 collaboration with Herva (“I love it because it was unexpected and powerful in the same way”), while the EP’s closing track ‘Nuvola’ stemmed from an internal conversation about taking his music “deeper and simpler”, leading to one of Dukwa’s most melodic and emotional tracks yet.

As with all of Dukwa’s music, everything on Matter of Time feels thick and textural but most importantly human, full of natural movement and rhythm. In his words, “complexity is not always the best choice you can take in music - but it’s an art to make complex music feel simple and enjoyable.” 

Tracklist:
01. Prune
02. Jeopardize
03. VoX
04. Nuvola

Dukwa - Prune

Download

Harry Thumann - Underwater (SLY Edit)

Acidité is a track I produced during a very quick session in my Marseilles studio in late 2023. I think the idea was to produce dance tracks that would have a certain harshness to them and sound sort of unpolished. I realize that is what I end up liking the most when it comes to dance music - when it sounds as being straight out of the home studio, with very little means and maybe some « mistakes » left here and there for the sake of it. Acidité revolves around 3 main ingredients - a Behringer TD3 riff (the Behringer cheap reincarnation of the legendary TB303), a conga loop and an iconic JB funk stab sample. It segues midway into a more trancey and motoric tunnel like techno track, driven by a « lately bass » straight line.

Lauer takes all the main ingredients of the original track, adding a house piano and a vocal sample on top, turning the whole thing into an amazingly uplifting and joyful yet melancholic acid house anthem.

Steve Reaver - Lost In Music

Steve Reaver