Marcel Wave - Lower Allston EP

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  • There's a certain strain of electronic deep house that is incredibly boring, and unfortunately Freerange is frequently guilty of releasing it. You know the type I mean: it's all melody and no rhythm, like a glass of water with a big spoon of sugar in it. Sure it's not a sin against the senses, but sometimes it's worth wondering if mediocrity is worse than abject failure. After all, if you hate a record passionately there's always the chance somebody likes it for the inverse reasons. So while there's nothing to truly hate here, there's nothing to love either, and that's pretty much the problem. ’27 Holton’ is a case in point. It's a meandering dub-house journey, sounding vaguely like Innervisions but baggier and with less focus. Âme seem to be the main influence but this doesn't reach their standard at any point. Wave's second cut here, ‘71 Aldie’ is a little better, but not enough to make you care. With a more stripped back early evening sound, it has far more direction than ‘27 Holton’, but just as few surprises. The truth is that there's so much good deep electronic house around it's hard to get excited about this staid sound. As if you needed proof of that, Freerange shoot themselves in the foot by drafting in Serafin for a remix, and Mr. Mountain People duly shows them how it's done. On his Back to NYC Mix he chops the synths into a typically mountainous psychedelic house loop, stretching it out to infinity. He then ties everything up with sweet percussion and a rhythm that gives the death penalty to the utterly flatfooted originals. It's deep and hypnotic and above all it grabs you. It's also as good as anything on Mountain People to date and even something of an anthem. If Freerange know how to pick excellent remixers, then why not hire excellent producers too? Okay is simply not good enough.
  • Tracklist
      A1 27 Holton A2 71 Aldie B 27 Holton (Serafin's Back To New York Re-interpretation)
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