- Minimal, low-slung techno that pays homage to Vancouver's rich dance music history.
- It's been a while since the last solo release from Vancouver producer Hashman Deejay (AKA Tanner Matt), but he's kept busy in the meantime. There was the lazy house-meets-Detroit techno of Kinetic Electronix and the fuzzy highs of his collaborative project with PLO Man and C3D-E as INT*era. At first pass, you'd be forgiven for confusing the title track off his latest EP as a continuation of the latter project.
"Drum Star" picks up right where we left Matt: a kick drum stumbling every fourth bar emerges from a sludgy swamp of modular synths. But as the track progress, things get funkier, as Matt throws a gradually ascending washboard synth and some boxy hi-hats into the mix. This simple but addictive formula sets the mood, as Matt provides three tracks that border on minimal techno. These are proper groovers that remind us that before Mood Hut and Pacific Rhythm, Vancouver was also the home of Mathew Johnson and The Mole.
Clocking in north of 135 BPM, "House Rockers," has the shoulder-popping flare and dashes of goofiness of the best early '00s minimal. Matt locks into a percussive groove with technicolor bursts of crazed saxophone, the occasional breathy pad break and rapid-fire shakers. Not much happens for the track's ten minutes, and not much needs to—you can ride a loop as good as this for a long time. The A2, "Bass Of Life," is the most experimental track on the record. A crunchy bassline snakes across the stereo while some AM radio static is piped in. Even without drums, it isn't hard to imagine Margaret Dygas or Daniel Bell reaching for this as hours stretch to days on the dance floor.
It's been half a decade since Andrew Ryce documented the fledgling dance music scene in Vancouver that garnered worldwide attention for its "sense of wooziness that makes the records feel world-weary and timeless." And while this sound became shorthand for a certain type of house in the interceding years, the so-called "Sound Of The Canadian Riviera" has never been homogenous. Whether it was the electro and IDM workouts of LNS, the sprawling emotional topographies of Yu Su or even the chart-topping house of Jayda G, an increasingly global underground can trace its origin point back to Cascadia. Hashman Deejay's latest record of minimal-adjacent techno is an essential entry in this catalogue—at once forward thinking, but also steeped in a sense of Vancouver history, not unlike something that might have had the Wagon Repair stamp back in the day.
TracklistA1 Drum Star
A2 Bass Of Life
B House Rockers