Saturday, March 22, 2008

Lady Luck EP - Tom Dazing (Heimatmelodie)


Here's a review of the latest offering on Andre Crom's Heimatmelodie imprint.

Title: Lady Luck EP
Artist: Tom Dazing
Label: Heimatmelodie
Cat Number: 007
Genre: Stripped -Down Funk

A1: Lady Luck
A2: Pun Intended
B1: Visually Hungry
B2: Visually Hungry (Arnaud le Texier remix)

Characterised by clicks, glitches and a weighty insistence, Tom Dazing's music speaks to the inner fugitive in all of us. I don't know if it's because I'm watching a scene from "The Bourne Supremacy" while listening to this or not but it's good car chase music this. There's a whiff of paranoia in the grooves that sits well on the music's dark side.

'Lady Luck' has a lot going for it and has a strident air about it but for my money hits the spot best when it crawls like a sinister disease underneath the beats using a cold-blooded analogue synth line to convey a lingering paranoia. Where 'Lady Luck' marches, 'Pun Intended' bounces and is a more contracted piece of work. It's peaks are characterised by flanged bleeps that behave themselves for the majority of then track but still sound like a barrel organ on crack. 'Visually Hungry' has a similar feel to 'Pun . . .' and very much feels like it's brother from a parallel world. The pitch is lower and more ratcheted and more delibrate. Arnaud le Texier's remix is slightly muffled in feel, and uses a squelchy sound from the original as it's main motif.

This EP's sporadic use of background noise that creates a claustrophobic feel between the grooves. It'll sound great on the right system, but it's subtleties could so easily be lost.

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