Tolga Diler & Semih Karakas - Judgement
Tolga Diler & Semih Karakas set-up includes drums, glockenspiel, rain stick, trombones and harp. Pretty much anything outside of synthesised sounds, in other words. Although their playing is either treated or cleverly cut-up, sampled and fed back to itself, the emphasis is on real instrumentation. Delicacy is the key here, and the sounds are allowed to breath independently thanks to a capacious backdrop sporadically illuminated by a mixture of spaced-out ambience and dubwise techniques. The kick drum begins as a flat, glassy smack with all the low-end shaved off, leaving a bumbling, sawtooth bassline to carry all the weight; the effect is remarkable, especially compared to the bass overload so endemic to tech house these days.
Here, the midrange breathing room accentuates all manner of nuance and almost accidental-seeming sound, like muted cowbellsand dripping faucets. Eventually, as the track bulks up, it turns into a powerful little number, with nervous, technoid bass riffs trading off with percussive fills, and a high-up string ostinato pulling taut the tension throughout.
But as heavy as it gets, its impact is less a matter of force than suggestion, with reverberant tympani rolling out like spotlit whitecaps, empty space's ebb checking the low end's flow.
The remix goes a little bit further and crafts the cut with the most urgency; a typically sub-aquatic arrangement that relies on a raw, subdued bell throughout, along with sparse percussion and the sounds of a short-wave radio being tuned.
Oscitone & Andy Newland's transitions from driving beats to blissful synths are mesmerising. From the dark and moody start, the mix progresses through several emotions, ending on higher tempo club material, only to drop back down into oddball territory; vocal samples of a man playing on an old game console while toms and snares fall all around him.
Strange enough to be interesting, but still able to keep you dancing all night. It's what has made this two artists an important names for house scene heads over the past few years. If everything were perfectly quantized, this would be a different track entirely, an exercise in clever sound design. But the unraveling grooves give Judgement an edge-of-your-seat quality, hellbent and vivacious, that's all too rare these days.
Tracklist:
01.Judgement (Original Mix)
02.Judgement (Oscitone & Andy Newland Remix)
Label: Insomniafm Records
Cat: IFMR011
Release: June 22th 2011
Style: Progressive House
Listen: here