Album · Organic House / Downtempo
Hive Audio – Summer Slices 2022
by Matija & Richard Elcox , Felipe Puertes , Smalltown Collective , Chris Sen & Guy Herman , Trees of Tampa , TSCHAN , Roman Blum , SOAME
by Matija & Richard Elcox , Felipe Puertes , Smalltown Collective , Chris Sen & Guy Herman , Trees of Tampa , TSCHAN , Roman Blum , SOAME
Various Artists – Hive Audio – Summer Slices 2022 //
Fresh off a busy summer yet again spent casting memorable hoodoo spells upon the ravers, Hive Audio rounds off the festival season with their new compilation “Summer Slices 2022”. Geared up with a choice allotment of solar grooves and deftly surgical machine funk, this round proves particularly heady and deep if anything.
A string of mercurial slabs, perfect to transition smoothly from the sunny days into fall’s hybrid ambiences, starting with Matija & Richard Elcox “Land of Zilla” – a moody, low-slung number to kick things off proper, with its ambiguously hazy atmosphere and nimble swing leading the parade. Felipe Puertes’ infectious multi-strain mashup “Everything of Life” worms its way in-limbo jagged Latin house reliefs, Chicagoan soulfulness and a tang of Afro-futuristic programming.
Swiss duo Smalltown Collective contribute a total jacking piece of arsenal with the steadily soaring “Amira”, which mixes elements of Arabic folk grammar with a liquid-like, bass-powered bounce and seesawing synths from outer space. On the fractals-unfolding “Hexagon”, Chris Sen & Guy Herman pull out a fine slice of verbed-out Tech House skirting on cinematic cliff-hanging, whereas Trees of Tampa shift the scope onto cosmic-indebted, space opera-friendly ambition with the enslavingly hypnotic “Sorcerer”.
Flexing muscles all the way, TSCHAN’s “Gosar” taps both in the classic hardcore sound, tribal techno and sino-flavoured harmonics to weave its own Frankensteinian monster of big-room effusiveness. “Under The Table” by Roman Blum belongs to a more straightforward genotype of early house laced with hints of garage and post-French touch pop-ish fun, while SOAME’s “Heat” provides exactly what’s written on the tin: no-nonsense onslaughts of smouldering hi-hats, dubbed-out vox stabs and buzzing synths processed to optimal floor-obliterating effect. [Hive Audio Dark – HA123]