Lawrence is a dj/producer from London with a vast knowledge of the house music industry. He has had his own productions released on many labels under different aliases and has also traveled the world djing for different sponsors and labels. All reviews are his own opinion and in no way reflect anyone else's.
Now this EP is SERIOUS! Fresh out on ‘Knee Deep In Sound’ by ‘Wehbba’ is this 4-track tech house/techno banger!
The first up is the original title track ‘Turning Point’. It’s a fast paced techy track with some really harsh, dark synths on the breakdown then back into a bouncy deep bassline.. awesome! Next up is a track called ‘The Bridge’, there are in fact two mixes included on the EP, one is the original and the other is a remix from Huxley. The original is another fast paced tech track with plenty of melodic blips and builds, all laid nicely over a dark bass pattern. The Huxley remix boasts the same signature blip pattern but breaks down more atmospheric and has a nice snare build up before a deep rolling bass kicks in on the drop, love this remix! The final track on the EP is my favourite and is the ANNA Remix of the title track ‘Turning Point’. It’s a big techno belter; dark and moody! Great use of the signature dark synths from the original but at a faster rolling pace. This one makes me want to go out! Love. It..
Here is something fresh from a producer I have been following for quite a while now, many years in fact! A great track from ‘Larry Cadge’ called ‘To Be Free’, released on his own label ‘Smiley Fingers’.
To me, what makes this track great is the positive feeling it gives off. Some really nice mellow chords, big builds and subtle drops. So many elements kicking in and dropping out. This is one I’d love to play at a big summer outdoor festival where the sun is belting down and the beer is ice cold! If the British weather holds up then I just might get to play it at one this summer!
This is a must have for the dj sets, and it’s part of an EP containing another track too. Get. It. Now..
The name Gregor Tresher has always been high up on the search results when doing my Friday afternoon tune hunt ready for the weekends gigs, and his productions never fail the dancefloors. This time around he has released an EP called ‘Surrender’ on Break New Soil Recordings. Instead of featuring the whole of the EP, I have selected my favourite track from it and I’m just featuring that (although the Soundcloud link below features all of them!).
The track that really sticks out for me is called ‘Depend’ and is a high energy, hi-hat heavy techno tune. Big breakdowns with gradual builds and drops, loads of side-chained white noise, and some quality dark synths. That pretty much sums it up, just have a listen and hopefully you’ll love it as much as I do.
Something fresh out on Tronic Records is this amazing remix package of two cracking tracks from Christian Smith. First up is his track ‘Turn The Lights’ which has been given a nice new approach by the legendary Nick Curly. This remix is really bass heavy and guaranteed to rock any tech-house or techno dancefloor. Simply awesome and one of my favourite tracks at the moment; I’ll certainly be dropping this at a few of my next gigs!
Next up is the dubspeeka remix of ‘Price Of Freedom’ and from the off it’s a powerful and aggressive techno banger. With plenty of choppy delayed vocals and harsh synth stabs, it’s definitely one for a big underground crowd. Screw your face up and nod your head; it’s big!
Lately here at phuk, we’ve had a little break from reviewing so we can concentrate on our own production, events and general future planning. However, with such great music being released at the moment it’s really difficult not to jump back in! So now we’re back and ready to showcase some of the industries biggest tunes from both the top players and the unknown. If we like it, we’ll write about it!
On that note, here is something special that has recently been released on Saved Records, a 4-track EP from Pirupa. I’m not going to go into proper detail with these as you can hear them for yourself but expect some top class production. The first track is called ‘Pitch Da Bitch’ and is co-produced by Leon, it has some blippy stabs and a rap vocal laid over big techy drums and a deep bassline. The second track, and my favourite on the EP, is called ‘Demons’. It contains more blippy stabs, but this time coupled with nice cinematic pads and synths, love this! Third on the EP is called ‘Nomad’ and is co-produced by Alex Kennon. Amazing track and a certain club banger, big breakdown and drop. I can’t wait to play this out! Last up is a track called ‘Space Odissey’, this has a familiar vocal loop laid over a nice bouncy, hi-hat heavy tech pattern. Some great use of the cowbell and 70’s style synth keys; but you gotta have the cowbell!!
Something fresh out on Federico Scavo’s label ‘Area 94’ is this tech-banger from Rokaman. Fusing together some big choppy vocals with a deep rolling bassline and some sketchy tech-drums. To me this brings back an old style of tech that I always loved and played out all the time. So many elements served up through breakdowns, drops and some pretty big drum-fills… love it!
Happy New Year and welcome to 2016! I’ve been having a sift through the inbox recently and there are some absolutely amazing releases coming that we’ll be reviewing over the next few weeks. Let’s kickstart 2016 talking about this amazing release on one of my favourite labels; Stereo Productions.
Fresh from producer ‘Joeski’ is this 6-part release of his track ‘Champion Sound’ including remixes from the likes of Rafa Barrios, Tini Garcia, DJ Fronter and Level Groove, with two mixes from Joeski himself. The original mix consists of some reggae/ska brass stabs, giving the track a real Caribbean feel, and some sketchy drums laid under what sound like Ragga vocal one-liners. Sat nicely under it all it a bouncy deep bass groove which compliments it all nicely. Joeski’s other mix is the ‘Boombastic Remix’ which is quite similar to the original but is more like a club version with a punchier bass groove and more tech-based drums, I’d say this remix is a slightly more predictable version of the original; still really good though!
Moving on to the Rafa Barrios Remix. This remix has some big hats throughout and the bass groove is a lot deeper. I’m playing this in my home studio and the bass frequencies are pretty much perfect, sounds awesome! So this has the original vocal elements sat over the hats, bass and a nice little siren. Love it!
Next up is a remix from DJ Fronter and from the off it’s a nice techy number, nice use of the sidechain on the pads during the intro and then into a big long breakdown. Now, I was expecting a pretty standard build and drop (which ultimately is what happens), but then a long horn sound comes in before the risers and snares, and then a huge drop into a deep tech banger!
If you’re a follower of Tini Garcia’s work, like me, you’ll have high expectations for this remix, and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s deep, melodic and has some really nice subtle chord stabs along with the vocal and brass stabs from the original. I’m a huge lover of a drum fills when they are used properly and this one has a little reggae-infused fill right before the drop. Great remix work.
And the final remix comes from Level Groove. This one has a nice bouncy repetitive bass pattern and some simple drums combined with some little vocal stabs. It has a nice long breakdown with a droning sound throughout, a big build up with snares and whooshes with loads of reverb before the drop. Not my favourite of all the mixes of I’m honest but awesome work nonetheless.
All mixes were released just before Christmas exclusively to Beatport, check it out..
Here’s something released a couple of days ago on the cat-loving label Suara, by Bontan. It’s a two-track EP which is heavily bassline driven.
The first track is entitled ‘Reality’ which has a male talking vocal that is expertly chopped up and laid over a deep and warpy bassline and sketchy drums. As all of Bontan’s tracks, it’s very well produced with loads of mini breakdowns and drops, stabs and extra little effects. The second track is called ‘State Of Mind’ as is very much like the first track, as in it has a deep and warpy bassline and male talking vocal, but this vocal tells more of a story.
Both tracks are worthy of a dancefloor and even sitting here now, my head is bouncing listening to them!
Here’s something that’s been out a couple of weeks and hit number 25 in the Beatport house charts instantly. A fresh 2015 re-lick of an absolute piano classic from yester-year; Gat Decor – Passion. There are a lot of remixes of old tracks surfacing in the house charts these days, but only a select few make a mark and gain popularity by radio plays and club plays, this is one of those! I am honestly hearing this everywhere at the moment.
If you’ve been a regular follower of this site, you would definitely have heard of both Reza and Barry Obzee (I have even collaborated on a few tracks with the two of them together!). Hailing from Birmingham, Reza has been a signature part of the house scene for many many years, having stamped his name on some of the biggest tracks on the market, do your homework, you know this guys stuff! And joining him on this track, from Surrey, is Barry Obzee. Barry has a huge history within the house and techno fields and a catalogue of releases to boot. The stuff this pair produce together is simply awesome!
So this version of passion brings so many elements from the original but with a few slight key changes and adjustments. A big breakdown and build up, and a bassline created from a very distinct part of the track that absolutely rocks! I’ve personally seen this one go off. It’s been supported by some of the industries biggest djs!
As demand for track reviews is on the up, and the Public House UK network is growing in popularity, we’ve had a lot of requests to start reviewing clubbing events and festivals all over the world. We are currently a London based non-profit organisation, and promoter budgets rarely stretch to paying for travel, accommodation etc for us to come and review their club, brand or promotion. With these limitations, we selected a few events and brands within London and the southern coast, and the first on the list was possibly the biggest:
THE SOUTHWESTFOUR FESTIVAL, Clapham Common, London – 29th & 30th August 2015.
Now before this event, we had a phuk meeting about what we were going to do at the festival, who we wanted to see, and who we could meet and grab a few words with. If you are regular subscriber to our reviews then you’ll know that there are two of us (at the moment) who write all of the content posts; Marcus Ali and Myself (Lawrence Friend). We both have a strong background in tech-house and techno as we are both djs, producers and label managers. It was fairly obvious we were going to head to the more underground artists to hear their sets.
The lineup was huge on both days so we had to pick wisely who we wanted to see. I wasn’t really up for getting there before 2pm on both days for a few reasons, mainly being that it would’ve been a bit too quiet at opening time. We tried to document the weekend as well as we can, let’s talk about how it went…
On the Saturday I met Marcus and a group of about 8 people at Clapham Common at about 2pm. Marcus and I were fortunate enough to be given guestlist passes by LockNLoad Events, so we headed over the guestlist entrance whilst the rest of our group went to the standard entrance gates. We were greeted at the gate by friendly security and staff and given our wristbands before heading into the festival.
Upon stepping foot into the festival, I put on my press lanyard and was immediately approached by two young ladies with clipboards, they worked for SW4 and informed me that Luciano was about to start his set on the main stage. I was asked if I would like to go backstage to take pictures of Luciano, obviously I accepted and was swiftly ushered through the dressing-room areas and straight onto the main stage. Now, it was at this time I realised that I hadn’t actually planned on taking any professional photographs and had left all my camera equipment at home, all except my trusty iPhone 6 – complete with high-quality camera.. Yes, you read that correctly, the only camera I had on me was an iPhone 6! Admittedly I looked a bit of a tit waving an iPhone around whilst there were other photographers nearby with lenses as long as my arms! Nevertheless, I took a few pictures and got out of there… quickly!
I went back to the other side of the barriers and re-connected with my group. We stuck around the main stage area and listened to the rest of Luciano’s set, the festival was still filling up so at this point there was only a few hundred people at the main stage. As well as trying to listen to the music, I was also trying to familiarize myself with what was going on, and where throughout the weekend. From what I heard, Luciano played some huge tracks and had everyone in front of him. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of the memorable sets for me over the weekend.
Next up on the agenda was to catch the end of Belgian DJ ‘The Magician’s’ set on the indoor main-stage, aka ‘Fatboy Slim presents the Smile High Club’. His set was exactly what I expected, some nice bouncy deep parts, followed by some dirty warpy basslines! A nice up-beat start to our festival experience. We stayed in the indoor main-stage tent for a few hours after this as the music selection was absolutely rocking and before we knew it, it was getting dark! So far we’d seen sets by Magician, Kolsch, Pete Tong and Gorgon City and they were awesome, but now we simply had to see Nic Fanciulli in the DJ Mag tent. As we were having such a good time in the indoor main-stage, we hadn’t noticed that the heavens had opened and turned the whole festival into a slippery mud bath. Nevertheless, we slid over to the DJ Mag tent. By the time we managed to get there, the tent was absolutely rammed, and rightly so; it was half way through his set and Nic Fanciulli was smashing it! Now, I know I’ll get some stick from readers when I inform them that also playing at the same time on other stages were artists such as Amine Edge & Dance, Sven Vath and Paul Oakenfold, but trust me, I have no regrets and know I was in the right tent. In the same tent straight after Nic was Solomun Vs AME then PanPot, needless to say, I was going nowhere! Thoroughly loved my first day at SW4 and it wasn’t finished there. There were still two more acts for me to see once this tent closed, these were Maceo Plex in the ‘Dream Don’t Sleep’ tent, and then the mighty Faithless in the main arena. Originally it was a toss-up over Faithless or Fatboy Slim, but as I’ve seen FS many time before Faithless won the bet. I was not disappointed! Their versions of Insomnia, God Is A DJ etc were spectacular. Unfortunately I only managed to get a few dodgy iPhone video’s of Faithless, but here’s a very grainy Insomnia..
So after an amazing day on the Saturday, I was ready for it all again on the Sunday! I headed up to Clapham Common for about 2pm again and was still nursing a sore head from the previous days antics, but I was so excited about the day ahead; I mean, had you seen that lineup??!! I pretty much knew who I wanted to see throughout the day, and fortunately most of which were all in the same tent. Upon arriving, I noticed it was much busier already than the day before and strangely all the mud from the previous day had disappeared?! I don’t know what they did throughout the night but it was all back to grass again… Weird!! I met up with my friends inside the gates and prepared for the day ahead; step one – beer!
The first set on my hitlist for the day was George Fitzgerald playing in the Maya Jane Coles & Friends tent. We arrived at the tent and things were warming up nicely, George was banging out some big techno tracks and the crowd were lapping it up, as were we. A great start to the day. We stuck around for most of George’s set but headed over to the indoor main-stage after about an hour. Now those who know me and have followed my DJing throughout the years will know that I used to be a resident for the event ‘Connected’, owned and operated by Jesse James. Jesse was on the lineup for the Sunday along with Johnny Bloomfield but unfortunately he was on before I arrived, I was gutted. On my way over to the indoor main-stage I bumped into Jesse James and Sam Divine, Jesse was in a great mood and informed me that Adam Beyer was running late for his set at 4pm and that he and Johnny Bloomfield will be covering his set until he arrived. This was great news, so I headed straight into that tent and waited for their set. Needless to say, Jesse & Johnny absolutely smashed it! I stood at the back again and got a bit of a grainy video but I can only imagine the buzz from playing in front of this many people, one day maybe eh?!
Next up after Jesse & Johnny was the mighty Marco Carola and unbeknown to me, was the set that blew my mind and left a mark. Whenever anyone mentions SW4 to me now, this set is the first thing I think of! Marco played the perfect mix of tech & techno, taking everyone in the tent on a journey of highs and lows and the crowd were going absolutely mad from beginning to end, I was hooked and going nowhere! Now, being a reviewer of many different styles of house and techno, it’s very easy for me to simply forget about certain DJ’s as I look forward, and although I’d heard Marco perform on recorded mixes a few times, I knew he was up my street but never got so excited about him. One of my friends who joined me on this day is a guy (and absolute legend) called Danny Cook. Danny is a straight arrow, he knows what he likes and he’d been waiting all weekend for Carola. As soon as he saw the name ‘Marco Carola’ move across the on-stage graphics he had the biggest smile on his face, he looked at me and simply said “watch this!”. He couldn’t have been more spot-on if he tried, my mind has been changed and this guy is now someone I follow intensely! The best set of the weekend in my opinion, here’s some footage I took of one of the drops… Hear that crowd!!
Up after Marco was the rescheduled later set from Adam Beyer. Adam played very well, some huge bangers in there and the already hyped up crowd were loving it, I was loving it! I was being dragged through so many emotions and feelings whilst going off to these tracks and I new the end of Adam’s set was close. Up after Adam was Loco Dice, someone I’d been waiting all weekend to see! By this point, I was cutting some serious shapes and was in desperate need of a break and an energy boost, so for the beginning part of Loco Dice’s set, I was searching for food, drink and somewhere to rest! Our group spend most of the Loco Dice set sitting just outside the tent where we could see and hear everything that was going on, but also recharge for Carl Cox’s set up afterwards. Even though I wasn’t actually dancing to Loco Dice, the set was amazing and ranked third in my personal best sets from the weekend. So now you know that Loco Dice was my third favourite set, and Marco Carola was my favourite, so who played the second best? Oh Yes Oh Yes, you got it.. Carl Cox! From the second that Carl stepped up to the decks, I got goosebumps! I mean, this guy is my absolute idol, he’s the biggest dj in the world! Fortunately I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Carl a couple of times and I’m also lucky enough to say that he actually grew up in the same road that I live in now in Carshalton, Surrey. It made a great conversation piece the last time I met him. Great guy, and an inspiration to so many djs. There’s not much to say really about his set, it went just how you would expect a Carl Cox set to go, he smashed it completely! I did manage to get another dodgy quality video during his set, here you go..
So to sum up the weekend, we had a really good time and saw some of the best djs in the world. It was obvious from the start that we would avoid the commercial performers. SouthWestFour, you ate us up and spat us out and we loved it! I would definitely do it again, and again, and again. My only criticisms on the weekend were that it could’ve been louder. On every stage, the sound systems were only set up at the front, meaning that the back wasn’t very loud. Due to this, the sound was bouncing off the back of the tent and creating a really irritating delay, this was the case for all stages except for the main outdoor. The only other thing was that this particular area on the common was a phone network black spot which stopped me from posting live images on our social media accounts, maybe this was something that the festival put in place on purpose to limit social media posts, who knows?! It would’ve been nice to do a few updates though!
We need to say a massive thank you to the guys over at Lock N Load events for giving us our passes for the weekend and the opportunity to experience something that will remain with us for years to come. Also gonna do a few shouts to some of the people who joined us at the weekend. Firstly Dmarco, my partner in crime at Public House UK, DEV:ROX (Craig) from Locker Room Records, Danny Cook from Arcko Digital, Daniel Green from Phonetic Recordings, Nicola, Laura, Reece, Raji, Katy, there’s a few more that I met over the weekend who’s names I never got, and a huge thanks to anyone reading this 🙂 Here’s a few blurry images of a select few members of our group.
New out on the mighty Toolroom Records is this series of remixes of NY’s Finest – Do You Feel Me. Collectively an amazing release for Toolroom, destined for the top of the house charts for sure!
Let kick things off with the Dosem remix, now this can simply be summed up in one word; Amazing! But I will say little more, this version marries together an old sounding house piano and vocal with brand new deep, bumpy basslines, builds and one hell of a drop. This one is staying in my set for a while! Up next is Bontan’s remix, this version is slightly deeper and more underground. The bassline is nice and punchy, and sits under some complex drums, blips & stabs, before an atmospheric breakdown, very nice! Last up is Gerd’s No-kick interpretation, which does exactly that; it features the nice classic piano riff and vocal, some amazing musical elements sat over a nice bass pattern and some real housey hats…. but no kick! Sounds surprisingly good, check it out…
