Duijn & Douglas: Cat Concrete
Nowar

Duijn and Douglas (Netherlands duo Esther Duijn and Steady Douglas) make their maiden voyage on wax with “Cat Concrete,” an eight-minute deep house stormer for Belgium label Nowar that's got club raver written all over it. Three minutes in, the bass-boogieing, hip-shaking track plunges deeper with backbeat hi-hat patterns, snappy percussion, a female vocalist's interjections, and syncopated piano chords. As per its title, the track's both lithe and hard, while Baaz's “Cat O'Nine Tails” B-side rendering stomps harder abetted by a low-slung bass line, slow jacking rhythms, and a skanky Chicago house vibe. In his six-minute makeover, the Würzburg, Germany-based producer works in fragments of gravelly male voices alongside the female's groans to give the track a raw sensual character. Different in kind, Duijn and Douglas's original is perfect for the early evening whereas Baaz's remix is tailor-made for the after-hours.

August 2009