Samaan - Merchants & Missionaries EP

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  • Samaan is pretty forthright about his Detroit techno influences. While that's no bad thing, it does set you up for a fall if your music doesn't measure up to the city's lofty musical standards (and you're inviting trouble by calling a track on your debut EP "Detroit Memories"). But Merchants & Missionaries, the Belfast-born producer's third release on his own label, is as well crafted as anything coming from the Motor City production line these days. Where past releases have hewn close to the Detroit classicism of Vince Watson, "Merchants & Missionaries" is harder to pin down. For a start, "Hutchings Palate" is a little less techno than, say, the caustic rush of previous EP Terminator Reserve, but it loses none of the details of Samaan's past work. Driven by a highly-strung four-note melody, the track is filled out by chopping hi-hats and a distant rumble of what sounds like artillery fire. D'Marc Cantu's remix isn't bad either. The Ann Arbor native's reinterpretation is a little more mannered, filing away at the edges of Samaan's fiercer original while keeping most of its menace in place. It's hard not to describe "Merchants & Missionaries" as a house-y take on Drexciya, but it's nonetheless well executed, and not so faithful to the source material so as to feel too reverent.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Hutchings Palate A2 Merchants & Missionaries B Hutchings Palate (D'Marc Cantu Remix)
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