VARIOUS ARTISTS

The Freerange Colour Compilation series reaches 9 years old this year and has somewhat prematurely gone Grey. ‘Grey 09’ includes both mixed and unmixed discs featuring four brand new and exclusive tracks which rub shoulders with a selection of some of the best tracks of the last 12 months from the likes of Lovebirds, Manuel Tur, Andre Lodemann, Alexkid and Jimpster. Up first is Melbourne’s Mic Newman with The Fidelity, warming things up nicely and setting the mood with soulful, disco tinged beats, shuffling Rhodes stabs and vocal hooks.Next, man of the moment Axel Boman delivering in spades on his remix of Lovebirds with its deep beats and Detroit pads. The first of the exclusives come next in the form of ‘Time’ by Arithmetics aka Pezzner and Matt Masters. Here we see the duo go deep with a harmonically shifting chord stab providing the focus while things go cowbell crazy in the percussion section. ‘Class Of 95’ from Alexkid follows with its filtering cross-rhythm pads and shuffling beats and provides another insight into how less can often be so much more when it comes to house music. Bassfort step up next with their peaktime slice of piano house ‘Last Night’, followed by a brand new track from Jimpster entitled ‘Late Night Blues’. Andre Lodemann’s ‘Together’ shows us just why this Berlin producer is ruling deep house right now and is winning fans all around the world. Freerange mainstay Milton Jackson steps up next, showing us a new string to his bow by producing a deceptively simple yet lovingly crafted lesson in deep, evocative house where the devil is in the detail and the space between the notes is paramount to the notes themselves. Isolée goes super deep and twisted like only he can with an incredible bassline, stripped back house groove and random sections of vocal muting and un- muting as if Mad Professor was at the controls.Bas Amro has been making waves the last couple of years and here we have his beautiful track ‘Ten’ as proof - warm enveloping chords, heart wrenching vocals and old school Guidance-inspired deep house sensibilities make this one a real winner.Relative newcomer Himan winds things down with a widescreen, slo-mo house track.With only a handful of releases and remixes on labels such as Connaisseur and Galaktika, Freerange are proud to be releasing this blissful, beautiful track from the young Portuguese producer.Genius Of Time close the show with their remix of Kyodai’s ‘Mi Rumba’. The Swedish duo build up the layers over a full three minutes before dropping into an absolutely killer stripped back beat with 808 sub-bass threatening to mess with internal organs.