- Highgrade Records, that bastion of irresistibly sleek and sexy throbbing beats, doesn't exactly seem like the breeding ground for great albums. A label arguably built around releasing highly-functional DJ tools, it's an issue exemplified by the tiring nature of the recent two-disc 10 Years Of Highgrade compilation, where the label's biggest names blurred together and explored the more bloodless side of futurism.
Thankfully, Highgrade head honcho Tom Clark's debut album for his own label is one of the best things to come from its environs in recent memory, tacking new ideas onto its well-established sound. Pressure Points isn't some grand reinvention of the minimal-tinged Highgrade sound, but it rejuvenates the label's aesthetic by revisiting its roots, and in doing so engenders something more suitable to album-length listening. Here, Clark's tracks are built from soulful, humid sounds, references to classic house and techno that are often lost in the coldly metallic surfaces of minimal. Rather than dissolve techno and house into the homogenous solution championed by so many producers (including some of his labelmates), Clark leaves them in suspension, visibly interacting throughout the duration.
Tracks like "Passion" and "Pressure Points" feature deep, warm basslines and deliberate, sensual rhythms that seem worlds apart from the robotic precision of some of his label's recent output. These songs take the fashionable sound of deep house and embed it into their grooves, a bit of pragmatism that goes a long way towards making Clark's music relevant and current. When techno's rigidity does make an appearance, it provides a satisfying contrast: "Snake Charmer" mixes in incisive basslines, reverbed synths and bouncy percussion, while "The Rock" nicely incorporates slippery techno pads for a slow jam that oozes sexuality with a little vocal assistance from Wareika's Florian Schirmacher.
Schirmacher helps to provide the album's most confident moment with the funky "All I Can See," a thoroughly dubbed-out track with a vocal that glides over the track's smooth contours. That's not to say that Clark completely escapes the perils of what you might expect from an album on Highgrade: "Keep Your Fancy Free" disrupts the album's flow, treading dangerously close to cocktail-lounge fare, and the 70-minute album can be a bit of a slog. Ten steady groovers are ten steady groovers any way you slice it. But Clark does his best to keep it interesting, ending the album with a bit pure deep house—no hesitant genre-mingling here—in "Floating Cells," which even carries some invigorating swing. You might not expect one of the year's most lovely home-listening albums to come out of Highgrade Records, but it's about time Highgrade broke from its reputation; consistency is all well and good, but it's rarely exciting.
Tracklist 01. Passion
02. The Rock feat. Florian Schirmacher
03. Pressure Points
04. Interlude 1
05. Hitch a Ride
06. Keep Your Fancy Free
07. All I Can See feat. Florian Schirmacher
08. Snake Charmer
09. Interlude 2
10. Dream Within a Dream feat. Florian Schirmacher
11. Secrets in My Pocket
12. Floating Cells