ALWAYS EVERYTHING

12”s YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

9. October - That Placid/Ewan Pearson Remix [Caravan]

It’s less than two weeks now until the first Caravan night kicks off in Bristol with a live performance from Kassem Mosse (stay tuned for the full scoop on that one later this week) so it seems appropriate to take a look back at the label’s most recent release. It’s quite possible you missed this – we did - as it crept out in a manner characteristic of Caravan: with only the slightest fanfare, creating only the slightest ripples on the surface of the Boomkat sphere.

If there’s one thing October’s label is always good for, it’s releasing masterfully odd pieces of house and techno that still somehow retain a warped sense of physical movement. It’s largely down to their subtlety – his own tracks acquire an entirely different energy on a big system with decent acoustics, with their tiny eddies of percussion and sub-bass suddenly acting as drivers rather than buoyancy devices. ‘Euro Dance Hit’ and ‘Flat Top Muscle’, for example, are metamorphic beasts, both built from individual analogue elements that whirr and clank ominously like heavy factory machinery. But place them in the context of a DJ set, either as tools or focal tracks, and their sparse, cool motion is replaced by something deeper and warmer. ‘Muscle Memory’, a brittle, broken take on dubstep, is even better, its waves of sub and doomy descending motif threatening to rip speakers to shreds as its energy transfers from electric to kinetic.

October’s latest, ‘That Placid’ is built along the same lines, from several elements that rub up awkwardly against one another. The friction generated somehow works, holding the track together rather than tearing it apart; it slowly builds tension over seven minutes, passing through batteries of motor city synth and wordless vocal chanting, before it’s all too much and its structure simply disintegrates. The Ewan Pearson remix on the flip, meanwhile, keeps the original’s essence intact but packs the surrounding gaps, grinding along with unsettling ‘the-machines-are-taking-over!’ menace. File alongside the rest of Caravan’s output: a distinct and compulsive take on house music. More like this please.

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Rory