Chiwax Germany Vinilo y CD

Review: Given that he has been operative on the Chicago house scene since its earliest days at the dawn of the 1980s, it's perhaps unsurprising that deep house legend Boo Williams' latest EP pays tribute to the city that he calls home. Jamiel Patton lends his spoken word vocals to opener 'Chicago The Place To Be', a hybrid deep house/Afro-house affair piled high with musical details (think short, tight acid lines, woozy electric piano lines, spacey synths and so on), and companion track 'Chicago The Place', an effects-laden, early morning alternate take that's effectively a dub mix of that track. Elsewhere, 'One Hour' is a sparkling, melodically impressive deep house workout with added bleeps, while 'The Same Again' is a locked-in-but-bouncy workout rich in fuzzy synth stabs, sweaty drum machine fills and held-note chords.

Review: D'Julz is a vital veteran of the European underground who continues to serve up the sort of irresistible grooves that both DJs and dancers need in their lives. The Frenchman heads up his own Bass Culture label but here lands on Chiwax with Raw Toolz 1. 'Murky' kicks it off with a sleazy and percussive house cut denied by its unrelenting lead synth sound. 'Ruff' is a physical and gritty tech house cut and 'Jackie' then explores an old school Chicago sound with trippy vocal fragments and plenty of filters. 'Raw' is a pumper with literal bells on for backrooms who want to get sweaty.

Review: One of Detroit's finest, Lauren Flax aligns with the Chiwax label for a debut offering of ultra-rough, juking, retrofuturistic daydreams in four tracks. Like a rose blossoming from a thorny stem, this EP starts out raw and slowly fans out into the subtler tricks of multilayering and accoutrement. 'Jack The Haus' is the tweezy, 16-bit hardware jam; then there's 'The Cheeky Whistle Song', which, compared to the first track, betrays a contrasting taste for cascading arps and subtle melodies in the surround mix. 'D-Troit' returns somewhat to the initial Detroit bounce mood, while Lis Sarroca's remix rounds things off with a softer, out-your-face breaks-house beeper.

Review: Daniela La Luz is no stranger to Rawax's stable of labels - she's previously released on most of them at different points over the last decade- though Global Transformation marks the first time she's appeared on any of them as Vanilla. The Berlin-based artist sets her stall out with the raw, punchy and occasionally sparkling title track - all woozy keyboard riffs, weighty electro-meets-house beats, tipsy chords and heavy bass - before opting for a deep, druggy, acid-fired and percussively propulsive vibe on 'The Last Window of Time'. Elsewhere, 'Animal Queendom' sees her wrap echoing, dubbed-out and reverb-laden synth riffs around a tough and locked-in beat, while 'All Together' is built around the twin attractions of sturdy, slightly off-kilter machine drums and jazzy electric piano motifs.