Adultnapper: Maxwell's Demon
Ransom Note

Craig Torrance & Philip Hochstrate: Shrinkage
Four:Twenty

New York DJ-Producer Francis Harris launches the Ransom Note label with his own high-octane Adultnapper banger “Maxwell's Demon” and sweetens the deal with a heavy acid-house treatment by Alexi Delano. The nine-minute original opens brightly with snappy jacking techno but the mood darkens when a, yes, demonic theme swoops into view two minutes in, hijacking the tune into ominous territory and lending it an aura of paranoia—none of which prevents it from kicking up a full head of steam, especially during its final laps. Delano 's mix recasts the tune as a mind-bending stomper that's as delicious as the original. Aside from the shared central theme, the remix is radically different from the Adultnapper version, especially when Delano adds perpetually burbling keyboard patterns and a swinging house pulse.

There's certainly nothing puny about “Shrinkage,” a sultry and hypnotic slice of deep tech-house by London-based Craig Torrance and his Berlin compadre Philip Hochstrate. The tune may start out rather unassumingly but, over the course of its nine-minute trek, it swells into a chattering colossus boosted by wave-like washes and an aggressive synth ostinato that eventually rises to a dramatic crescendo. Samim weighs in with a ‘Schoenaeboelae' remix that upends the original's straight-up groove with a lurching funk pulse, wholly redefining the original in the process, and with handclaps and breathy exhalations that bolster the tune's physical character.

September 2007