- One of the great things about going to a club is hearing how certain tracks are supposed to sound. Subtle-sounding tunes you might have previously considered mellow warm-up tracks turn into bombs, while cuts that seemed in-your-face at home may offer little in the way of surprises. There's something special about the first kind. Case in point: Hello?Repeat Soundsystem's "Elevate Escalate," the eight-minute A-side of Playground Vol.1, the first release from new Tokyo label Vis Rev Set. Listen to it on SoundCloud or monitors at home and you might write off "Elevate Escalate" as a low-key groover only suitable for a party's opening hours. But in the club, you can feel safe playing this to a packed room, thanks to heaving sub-bass and a collage of synth snippets that only get weirder as they get louder.
DeWalta's jazzy and shuffling "Be My Man" and label co-founder DJ Pi-Ge's darker "Sanmonban" occupy Vol.1's B-side. Both emphasize atmosphere over any one particular element, rendering the tracks breezier and more tool-like than Hello?Repeat Soundsystem's poignant roller. "Elevate Escalate" seems to be the first official collaboration from longtime friends Daze Maxim and Jan Kreuger—let's hope there are more tracks on the way.
TracklistA1 Hello? Repeat Soundsystem - Elevate Escalate
B1 DeWalta - Be My Man
B2 DJ Pi-Ge - Sanmonban