ALWAYS EVERYTHING

12”s YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

10. October – Vanamonde EP [Misericord]

In case the last edition of this series and our recent interview feature weren’t evidence enough we’re big fans of Bristol’s analogue hero October. As well as running the consistently impressive Caravan label – which has been responsible for some of the oddest but most compelling house and techno tracks of the year (October’s own lopsided vision of dubstep’s sub-heavy signatures, ‘Memory Man’, and the crushed, superbly tense Ewan Pearson remix of ‘That Placid’) – his own productions effortlessly span a host of different styles, but manage to remain bound together by a shared aesthetic. Written on real, analogue gear, and avoiding digital processing wherever possible, his tracks have a raw, spontaneous feel, and thrive off the strange things that happen when separate elements play off against one another.

While Caravan often acts as a home for some of his stranger or more difficult music – the indistinct slo-mo chaos of ‘Euro Dance Hit’ is practically subaquatic in nature – this recent EP for Ewan Pearson’s Misericord label is lush and sumptuous, a set of melodic analogue house tracks for the early hours. Why it’s worth a little more of your attention than the piles of other house 12”s that surface every week is the deeply unsettling undercurrent that flows just beneath the dancefloor warmth of its surface, placing it firmly in line with the rest of his output. The voyeuristic ‘Bree Daniels’ is disco edit as reimagined by David Lynch, with a lightness of melodic touch that belies the prowling groove that lurks at its core. It’s a full six minutes through when the mood suddenly lightens, parting to sun-drenched coda to close. ‘Breeprise!’ examines the same themes from a slightly different angle, and both ‘HD-189733B’ and ‘Shalmairane’ offer slow-churning, tracky alternatives to the A-side’s considered drift. Inventive, chaotic, but always inviting stuff, and a neat counterpart to the jacking, era-spanning nature of his DJ sets.

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Rory