Weekly Roundup: what we’ve had on repeat

Image by Toma Kostygina

Featuring new material from electronic music veterans to captivating and bewitching new voices, we round up the releases that caught our attention this week. In no particular order, here’s what we’ve had on repeat: 

Sofi Tukker / Carl Cox – Drinkee (Carl Cox Remix)

Sofi Tukker is like an endless margarita, sometimes with extra salt but always with extra tequila. Maybe even some MDMA. Drinkee is perhaps most emblematic of the duo’s instant pool party manifesto, with its icy cool Fender riff and Tucker Halpern’s signature pitched-down Portuguese babble. For his take on the track, the godfather of techno Carl Cox switches the locale from Ibiza to Detroit, refurbishing Drinkee’s interiors with a spacious techno pound and squabbling rave synths. Building his remix around Sophie Hawley-Weld’s luscious verse and vocalisations, Cox takes Drinkee from day to night, seasoning the cut with passages of distorted breakbeats, rapid fire hi-hats and a bouncing synth line. Cox adds menace, but keeps the summer party energy of Sofi Tukker intact into the early hours. The remix is released via Ultra Music, download it here. 

DJ Manny – Signals In My Head 

The South Side’s rising footwork star DJ Manny finds himself enamoured with romance on his latest collection, Signals In My Head. Fusing the sophisticated breakbeats of hyperspeed footwork with the sensual come-to-bed energy of horny RnB, Manny finds a passionate lover rolling deep in the sheets of his rhythmic syncopations. For his love fest, Manny looks to vocal samples that key in on the tonality of desire and devotion. Wants My Body chops up an impassioned gospel sample and throws it against erratic and bouncing beatwork, with washes of electric synths adding a warm sexiness and twangs of longing. All I Need shakes up a scuzzy R&B chorus with kinetic rapid-fire beats and whomping bass, while opening track Never Was Ah Hoe’s hushed confessional sets the tone for a collection of refreshingly concept driven badass beats from Chicago’s underground. Signals In My Head is out now on Planet Mu, download it here. 

DJ Seinfeld – These Things Will Come To Be 

While June’s U Already Know hinted towards DJ Seinfeld’s elusive machine funk side, the second single from the producer’s upcoming album Mirrors is classic Seinfeld faire; a rolling, emotive tech-house cut with ambiguously captivating layers of sonic washes and a heavy dose of sentimentality. A bright synth arpeggio underscores that introspective, high on the dance floor at sunrise feeling but it’s the mid-section of These Things Will Come To Be that really seals the deal. Here, the beat pulls away and the synths dissipate as a voice note style vocal sample confesses, “I want to go back to the old days, because I miss you.” It’s emotional cheese of the highest order but it’s enough to sell the melodrama by the time the beat returns, deeper and heavier than before to carry you to Seinfeld’s teary eyed albeit cathartic finale. Mirrors is out on September 3rd via Ninja Tune. Pre-order it here. 

Olga Kouklaki – Riddle 

Olga Kouklaki is a striking new voice with a unique signature sound that has the potential to cast some serious spells. The Greek multi-instrumentalist, producer and most likely siren is gearing up to release her album Dusty Diamonds on September 21st. Riddle arrives as the second single from the collection, and is a mesmerising concoction of tech-house, darkwave, and art-pop by way of Björk and Karin Dreijer. Kouklaki’s soft, spellbinding vocals tumble amongst the currents of a grooving house beat and deep, pulsing bass. The magic is only heightened by the way Kouklaki layers her voice and harmonies, quiet and spectre-like to produce a strange, preternatural tonality that demands you wreck your ship upon her rocks. Sitting at a radio-friendly four minutes, thankfully Kouklaki has released an extended version of the Riddle, which we insist you consider the only version in existence. Kouklaki has been playing music since she was 8, and as the writer, producer and performer of her material she is a multifaceted gem who is poised to make some serious waves. Consider us transfixed. Dusty Diamonds will be released via Little Doll Music, download Riddle here. 

Vitalic – 14 AM

You’re probably going to be hearing a lot about Vitalic over the next few months. The French electroclash maestro is slowly revealing more from his forthcoming project DISSIDÆNCE, a two part album whose first half is out on Clivage Music in October. 14 AM is the latest single, and compared to the manic Carbonized, it’s a change of pace. A breathy, staccato vocal sample is chopped and layered atop slowly bubbling bass, whining extraterrestrial synths and a slow burning beat. The interaction between these samples and synth lines give 14 AM a rising, progressive feeling which is rewarded when the beat drops midway. However, the track’s finest moments are its final moments, when the sky-high pitched synth squeals recede and those stabbing robot chants take the lead as deep, pounding techno percussion clangs beneath. If anything, 14 AM makes the promise of DISSIDÆNCE’s “electro-mutant disco” more alluring, suggesting that this may produce more diverse results than Carbonized led us to believe. Pre-order DISSIDÆNCE Episode 1 here.