Coming from Berlin's Sonar Kollektiv, the co-op run by members of
Jazzanova, you might be surprised that the music made by Kristian Beyer and
Frank Wiedemann has little to do with the bossa-jazz of their labelmates, and everything to do with minimal deep house from the likes of
Larry Heard and
Metro Area. In fact, so milky are these analog slow jams that you might just imagine that you've stumbled upon a collection of ultra-rare
Moodymann outtakes. It's certainly not hard to imagine on the opener, "Sun Sugar" that uses a one syllable vocal sample you'd swear was lifted off of
Moloko's classic "Sing It Back," although the loose calls of "Can you feel it?" takes you straight to the underground of Chicago. "Tonite (Dub)" isolates single congas in galactic sized echo chambers while "Ojomo" takes the slightest hint of a nu-jazz snare break and delays it to stay perfectly in step with a synthetic reggae note. "Hydrolic Dog" begs the question, what if
DBX made a record with disco strings? And "Life Changes" insists that the disco lose the strings altogether. Like many German artists fixated on American sounds, this duo fail to accomplish anything breathtakingly original. But since the few creators of masterful minimal house can't seem to keep up with demand, we'll certainly take the work of this pair as more than just a stop-gap.