SYNKRO - Lost Here - Apollo Records

Close your eyes and breathe deeply with this one, as Synkro returns for his third release on Apollo with four new productions of affecting, midnight electronica. Joe McBride's ear for inimitable melodies has always fit his intricate percussion patterns like a glove. On the Lost Here EP, however, the Synkro project has been elevated to a new level with subtle flourishes of pop structure and two standout vocal performances by Robert Manos. Lost Here ascends to the clouds, hovering on cavernous chords that wrap Manos' words in a cocoon of eyes-down emotion as scissoring rhythms flit underneath. Touching down again, In My Arms calls on circadian rhythms and oscillating layers of synthesizer to create a dreamlike environment, isolating Manos' song in an antechamber of space and sound. The B side slinks in with a playful bass riff on Nights of Pleasure, underpinning celestial waves of chimes, tones, and chords before Fading Lights suspends each element in zero-gravity as a pure, heat-treated distillation of the Synkro sound.
Although still maintaining a presence in the wider bass music sphere, Synkro showcased his diversity in tempo, structure and new sound with the superlative ‘Reservoir’ bw ‘Just Say’ on Box Clever & ‘Angels VIP’ bw ‘Good Loving’ on Smokin' Sessions. Major support for Synkro music has come from names like dBridge, Instra:mental, ASC, Chris Coco, Giles Peterson, Brendon Moeller, Mary Anne Hobbs, London Electricity, Kasra & many more. This has displayed a maturation of his sound & style, and with material of various tempos scheduled for release on respected labels labels such as Exit, Autonomic, Brownswood Recordings, Blackout Music, Critical, Warm Communications, Pushing Red, Mindset, Box Clever any many more, it has become increasingly obvious that this will be the year when Synkro takes his deserved place amongst the luminaries of the electronic music world. Synkro's musical career has already seen him DJing everywhere from Manchester to Poland, London to Belgium, and Cardiff to the USA, and it is inevitable there will be many more stamps in Synkro's passport by the end of this year as he takes his new sound to the world.


Tracklist:

A1 - Lost Here
A2 - In My Arms
B1 - Nights Of Pleasure
B2 - Fading Lights

OM UNIT - Threads - Civil Music

Threads is the debut album from London producer Om Unit,  released on Civil Music in October 2013. While this is a debut full length for Om Unit, real name Jim Coles, it is in fact the producer’s fourth studio album, following from work in the 2000s under the name 2tall. Having reset the clock on his artistic output in 2010, Coles has spent the past three years refining a unique sound as Om Unit via collaborations with Machinedrum on Planet Mu, releases on Goldie’s Metalheadz, dBridge’s Exit Records and Civil Music, his own Cosmic Bridge label and the short-lived Phillip D. Kick alias that fleshed out the links between Chicago’s footwork, jungle and slow/fast. The confluence of all this work takes full flight on Threads. Across its fifteen tracks Threads articulates Om Unit’s musical journey from his beginnings to the present. It references his hip hop background, in the swung out, hypnotic headnod of ‘Wall of Light’ and the positive message of ‘Just Sayin’’, a collaboration with the mysterious Gone The Hero, (who will be stepping out of the shadows on Jneiro Jarel’s Label Who imprint in 2014,) and touches on the music that has impacted him in recent years such as dubstep, the bassweight of which anchors the album. Dubstep’s influence is most obvious in the eyes-down roller ‘Nagual’ and the deeply emotive ‘The Silence’ featuring vocalist Jinadu. There are also hints of slow-mo house’s chug, a sound Coles first experimented with upon taking the Om Unit name. It’s this slow groove that drives the spellbinding ‘Patients’ featuring Young Echo’s MC Jabu, who gives life to the beat with poetic raps, and it’s also central to the 2013 reworking of ‘The Corridor’, a track from the first Om Unit release. Here Coles slows the original’s key elements down even further while managing to keep all the slow moving, hypnotic magic of the original. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the album is grounded in Coles’ junglistic roots, a relationship that has driven much of his recent output and DJ work. Here it takes on its most refined form yet, equally apparent throughout but obviously manifested on the most dancefloor friendly tracks: ‘Jaguar’, ‘Wicker and Pearl’ and ‘Governer’s Bay’. These three tracks close the album but not before one more parting shot, the deeply meaningful ‘The Road’ featuring London’s urban poet, and legend, Charlie Dark. A key part of the Threads experience is how the tracklisting presents the music, balancing introspective and energetic moments, instrumental and vocal. While stand out moments can be picked, as they are sure to, Threads is an album that works best when the listener lets him or herself be guided by its creator. It is perhaps cliché for a label to claim that their next release is a standout, or even a classic, record yet Coles’ maturation as a producer over the past decade has allowed him to synthesize all these influences and references into something coherent and unique that takes the listener on a personal yet accessible journey. As such Threads truly feels like it has that classic potential. “The road is selfish and the road can be hard, the road can be long, the road can be far / The road will mean struggle, the road will leave scars, the road requires wisdom, the road requires truth / The road will never care about the fire in the booth” – Charlie Dark, from Om Unit - Threads LP, track 15 ‘The Road’


Tracklist:

01. Folding Shadows
02. The Silence
03. Healing Rain
04. Jus Sayin'
05. Drift Interlude
06. Reverse Logic
07. Corridor 2013
08. Nagual
09. Patients
10. Deep Sea Pyramid
11. Wall Of Light
12. Jaguar
13. Wicker And Pearl
14. Governer's Bay
15. The Road