Back catalogue: Minimal House/Tech House

Review: Long-serving Italian producer Marco Passarani continues his newly minted Studiomaster label project with its second instalment, serving a quintet of typically floor-focused jams on 'The Temple' EP. Arguably best known for being one half of the looped-up disco duo Tiger & Woods, Passarani is also known and loved for the more techno-tilted offerings he turns out from his hometown of Rome. His latest work sits somewhere in between his two trademark sounds, starting with the throbbing sleaze of opener 'The Empty Temple', with its purposeful bass, paranoid synths and dirty vocal whispers. The fierce, snare-driven rhythms of 'Night Walker' power grubby bass and glistening synths, while the descriptively titled 'Rotten Disco' offers a brilliantly wonky glimpse of future Italo. The distorted percussion and jagged bass of 'Dirty Hands' are aimed squarely at the floor, while the storming closer 'Cheater's Smile' bangs as hard as nails to complete a suitably stirring and tightly produced set.

Review: DBH welcome Mihai Popoviciu & David Delgado the the Pleasure Zone series with the 'Evolution' EP. Bringing jazzy, sloshy, jerking flavours to the tech house palette, 'Evolution' and 'Shifting' evolve and shift, convoking a delegated moot of propulsive chords and forward-driving janks, conveying the mood of a finely tuned closed clockwork system chugging away like the central engine of a wider contraption. Closer 'Black Light' operates more readily in the lower regions of things, proving unafraid of sounds that lean towards the more peripheral and umbral.