Butch - Watergate 18

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  • In case track titles like "Peyote," "LSD-25" and "Mushroom Man" were too subtle, Watergate 18 makes it clear that Butch has a penchant for psychedelics. With the way these tracks seem to melt together, his edition of the Berlin club's mix series has the same hallucinatory quality as the bending clocks in Salvador Dali's The Persistence Of Memory—the painting from which Butch cribbed the title of last year's EP with Hohberg (and judging by the moustache he's been sporting lately, it's not just names Butch has nicked from the godfather of surrealism). Of course, anyone who's heard Butch's records will know his brand of psychedelia has nothing to do with tie-dye trance (even if the sitars and wailing of "Thai Cubensis" occasionally drift too close to Buddha Bar territory). Rather, like Dali, he seems more concerned with how little details can toy with your perceptions in disorientating ways—like the almost subconscious flickers and echoes you can sense in Minilogue's "When Sadness Releases, Joy Arises." Depending on your point-of-view, dancing to a story of date rape on the Ricardo Villalobos mix of The Horrorist's "One Night In NYC" is either electro-sleaze at its most twisted or a cheap shock tactic, but the way it then kicks into the furious tribal percussion of Rocco's "Tbt3" shows that Butch knows exactly the right time to wallop. He pulls a similar and equally effective trick when the spooky spoken word segment of Polar Inertia's "The Last Vehicle" rips into Sigha's relentless "The Art Of Dying." The final stretch of Watergate 18 feels like a long, soft-focus fade: the jazzy keys of Sebastian Mullaert's "Chant De Paris" ripple into the murmuring sounds of Vincenzo Monastra, Heiko Laux and ornél Kovács, before ascending with the tranquil ending of Weltwirtschaft's "Maud." Watergate 18 lifts the series out of the rather dull deep house and tech house rut it seems to have settled into recently. It isn't essential, but it's certainly got personality.
  • Tracklist
      01. Jonas Kopp - 55 Dias 02. Octex - Liagon 03. Mister Jackson/Draq - Visohvis (Cezar Remix) 04. The Horrorist - One Night In NYC (Ricardo Villalobos Remix) 05. Rocco - Tbt3 06. Redshape - Goom 07. Alland Byallo - Blindsided 08. Minilogue - When Sadness Releases, Joy Arises 09. Shifted – Gates + Area Forty_One - Reminiscence 10. Shifted – Gates + Martini Brös. - Big And Dirty 11. Jeff Derringer - Panic 12. WestBoy - Green Illusion (Truncate Remix) 13. Polar Inertia - The Last Vehicle 14. Sigha - Politics Of Dying 15. Butch feat. Hohberg - The Spirit 16. Vedomir - Musical Suprematism (Marcel Dettmann Remix) 17. Butch & Hohberg - Thai Cubensis 18. Sebastian Mullaert - Chant De Paris 19. Vincenzo Monastra - Incessantemente (Zece Remix) 20. Heiko Laux - Souldancer (Ray Kajioka Remix) 21. Kornél Kovács - Szikra (Abdulla Rashim Remix) 22. Weltwirtschaft - Maud
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