BTon: 4th Floor
Source Records

When Jonas Grossmann isn't co-running Source Records or issuing material as one-half of Deep Space Network (both endeavours undertaken with David Moufang), he's creating polished electronic soul tracks under the BTon guise, fifteen of which comprise his solo debut 4th Floor. Soul may be the predominating feel, but BTon's smoothly chilled tracks cross over into funk, hip-hop, blues, and drum & bass. Though Grossmann demonstrates a marked affection for warm analog synths and vocoders, other distinguishing details surface throughout: the low honk of a baritone sax in “Buzzerbeater,” synth glissandi darting about a vocal line in “Schieber,” and handclaps and voice patterns next to a sleepy drum machine groove in “Breit.” Vocals figure strongly in a couple of tracks: a lush bass bounce introduces the sensuous “Meanwhile” before a hypnotically mellow vocal (presumably Grossmann's) appears while kitschy lyrics in “Schieber” (“Oh, baby, let's get down tonight / Shake your booty, shake it right”) would be totally off-putting if the song's curious-sounding vocal hook and mellow soul weren't so irresistible. Elsewhere Grossmann offers analog synth funk (“Btonation”), spacey hip-hop splatter (“Stealth Tax”), bluesy rambling (“Nocturne,” heard previously on the opensource.code comp); it's entirely characteristic of BTon's sound that, when drum & bass patterns appear in “Down Home” and “In Space,” they do so understatedly. No matter the song, the common denominator in BTon's space-age leisure music is the sophistication of its crisp minimal style.

June 2005