Floorfiller – Restless – Hadshot

Via the boom in progressive over the last couple of years, a good many of us are starting to get pulled into the electro sound. And with high-octane psytrance alienating left right and centre, and catalysed by “getting a bit long in the tooth,” it’s not hard to see why. Floorfiller: Restless, compiled by Hadshot’s Yaniv, is a pretty neat Teutonic slice of electro pie that serves up well with analogue fission chips (sorry). John Tejada’s Sweat is a slinky, low-cut retro acidhouse number, with an insanely deep and moody feel to it. It starts up slow and picks up into a tasty electrotech groove that ought to get some bodies writhing. Lopazz’s Blood (Tiefschwarz remix) goes smoothly from tetchy soulful electro and picks up a wonderful little high-end melody to drive it along. The effect is interesting: the funk isn’t lost, but when it all drops in together there’s a simple and very very effective motion to the track. The aggressive “don’t give a fuck” vox on Antichic & Popped!’s Chemical Junk wins jaded-credibility points. Aggressive, pumped electro-punk; a warm-up for Rotterwolfe’s No More, a pacey and dirtily frenetic bit of bundes-tekno that almost reminds me of some of the more-difficult-to-listen-to R&S moments. Current hot property Coburn co-delivers the goods with Dumb Blond for Sugar Lips, a dirty and sexed-up steamfest that’s made for me by a particularly saliva-friendly sub-bass flurry towards the end. Beckers’ Switch gets another remix, this time from Oliver Klein and Peter Juergens – for my money this is the best remix out there, spending a long time on kick drum foreplay before slowly bringing in the theme, vox and chords, and peppering it with hefty bottomend analogue fartage. Özgür Cän pulls a blinder with The Love Below, noisy in a Fuzzion sort of way and with more emotive changes and escalations than you can shake a stick at. Clever stuff. Bioground’s Cinnamon and Traffic Signs’ The Big Fake are stripped-down, lo-fi electrotastic workouts, the latter with a definite dubby advantage as fat sounds come and go and make for a meaty, succulent effect. Jay Fever’s Minute Of Silence is a thrusting bit of 4-4, with oodles of analogue acid flustering over a simple, effective four-note hook. Finally, Undo & Vic Noise close the comp with Orca, a gorgeous tune that’s a real grower, sounding better each time I play it (which, at the moment, is at least three times daily.) Soaringly simple melodies, tight production, and a groove that’s as hypnotic as it is baggy make it rather a special little moment in dance music. What sets this release apart, however, is the bonus mix CD: nicely mixed and tight, there’s a couple of extra tracks (Martin H’s slinky pornorama Things All Right, and Electrixx’s wonderful Second Lesson, which is quite unlike anything else on show here.) You’re either going to be in love with this sound, or you’ll find it leaves you cold. If what you’re after is a slab of decent, quality electro then you don’t need to look any further than this.