René Breitbarth - Baseline

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  • There's a danger in moving to Berlin, DJs and producers will tell you. You're having such a good time enjoying the variety of party choices in the techno capital that you forget to work on your own craft. For René Breitbarth, however, the move to Berlin has been a hugely fruitful venture, unlocking a sunny disposition in his work that always lingered right beneath the surface. Last year's Le Rythme Korg EP had a deft touch that's carried through to his newest on Treibstoff, Baseline. For a career that seemed mired in forgettable tech house—with highlights few and far between—Berlin has served to revitalize his creative spark. Blame it on Club der Visionäre, the inspiration for his recent RA podcast. It's given his work a new buoyancy. The tracks here are deep and frothy, building slowly to minor, refined climaxes: The title track washes chords back and forth for six minutes over a tech house beat before finally unleashing the main theme and knocking the house down slowly, but surely. "Criminal," meanwhile is a tech house groove that matches its percussive intricacy with a lovely, interlocking pinging melody and "Jingling" jangles more than a (nominally) deep house track has any right to, sounding a bit like Akufen gone pop. While each track here sounds decidedly different, each brims over with the sort of enthusiasm that you might not expect from a producer more than a decade into his career. For many, a move to Berlin is an economic necessity to continue their dream of being an electronic musician. For Breitbarth, it seems, it also helped him to remember what made him want to be one in the first place.
  • Tracklist
      A Baseline B1 Jingling B2 Criminal
RA