DiDark / ’30 EP’
Digital / Vinyl
DiHox Records / Released January 19th 2011
These days a lot of tech house can be accused of having lost its way. Content to simply plod, unobtrusively, through some kind of dance no man’s land, only capable of offering up shades of its former glory. Then other releases are so damn proud of what they’re about it’s impossible not to feel your legs starting to give in to that infectiously basic 4/4 time signature.
This, the follow up to last year’s well received Vitalis Calor EP, sees DiHox co-founder and joint head honcho Damien D’Arcangelo, A.K.A. DiDark, add another finely tuned string to a burgeoning bow that has already coaxed the likes of Umek in for remix work. Suffice to say then, this falls into the ‘wears heart on sleeve’, pounding, filthy, and no doubt soon to be over-heated category of the aforementioned, often abused sub-genre.
Decennis on the flip offers a great tool to anyone who can put the words beat and match together in the literal sense, what with its tribal rhythm, party starting cuts and crescendos, all married with a firm foot on the accelerator bassline and carnivalesque piano breakdown. But really this is all about the A-side, which comes in the form of Triginta. Think huge beats, a relentless pace, jacking bass, punchy vocal snaps, and the kind of dancefloor focused details that mean the difference between a sloppy, poorly-targeted production, and a serious stormer in full effect. Bouncy enough to have made the late great Tony de Vit take notice, this is peak time being made in exactly the kind of way it should be, and as such needs to be taken very seriously indeed.
