The Blow: The Love That I Crave
(Strategy and Caro Remixes)
Audraglint/Holocene Music

Solenoid: Night Beach/Sam Clam's Disco
Community Library

Merge The Blow's hook-filled “The Love That I Crave” (from the full-length Poor Aim: Love Songs) with Strategy's disco pulse and house piano vibe and what d'ya get? Infectious magic, that's what, as Paul Dickow surrounds Khaela Maricich's softly sluicing (and occasionally vocodered) vocal line with all manner of Strategy invention in his “Strata Club Remix.” On the flip side, Caro (Orac head Randy Jones) pairs her exhalations with an acidy mechano strut and cowbell accents in “The Puddles of Love Remix” before gently cooling the pace in “The Sea of Love Remix.” Though all three treatments travel different pathways, Maricich's voice remains the glue holding the enticing trio together.

Solenoid's “Night Beach”/“Sam Clam's Disco” 12-inch constitutes the first release of new material from David Chandler (aka DJ Brokenwindow) in two years, though the material's sleek élan reveals no sign of rust. On side one, staccato synths flare across twilight expanses in the rambunctious and jubilant “Night Beach,” an epic groover that draws upon electro, house, funk, and even makes room for a tumbling Latin percussion episode. And if ever the word ebullient applied, it does to Solenoid's eleven-minute “Sam Clam's Disco” where warm showers and squirting fizz march over a bleepy backbeat and querulous synth acid. Sweetening the tune even more is its surprising transition from sunny dance-floor raver to ominous hailstorm during its closing third. A promising teaser for his upcoming Orac full-length Supernature.

March 2006