- Workshop co-founder Jens Kuhn approaches house with the intricate craftsmanship of a toymaker. His ticking wind-ups charm with whimsical grooves and novel melodic flourishes, but just as you think you've got their inner workings figured out, a new element springs into action and changes everything.
Take "Angstrom," the lead track on his new EP for Leipzig's Polyfon. Opening with a plinking drum pattern, a few simple synth phrases, and a twinkle of bell kit, it's a quirky, tracky trifle with a tightly circling groove. But the late arrival of sober strings comes as a total recalibration, the track suddenly transformed by the idiosyncratic, multi-layer interplay of brightness and brooding. An intriguing curio akin to Anton Zap's recent "Spain," "Angstrom"'s grooves are neatly interlocked, but its personality is tough to pin down.
The quivering but bouncy house of "Running Elephant" has a familiar, retro palette, but any lingering classicism is buried beneath a lopsided, eccentric funk all its own—one that's uplifting and eerie in equal measures. "Soliloquies," meanwhile, grows from a bulbous, floppy bassline that wobbles and wriggles through a haze of imploring strings and ghostly samples. Juxtaposing a daydream sway and a sleazy shimmy, "Soliloquies" is pregnant with tension, but also funky as hell. Fans of Lowtec or Workshop won't want to miss it or, for that matter, any of the tracks on this stellar EP.
Tracklist A Angstrom
B1 Running Elephant
B2 Soliloquies