Mike Wall: Out of Fire EP
Hidden Recordings
I've no quarrel with the other two originals on Mike Wall's Out Of Fire EP, but it's the title track that's clearly the release's standout. A natural born floor-filler, the cut hits with commanding force, especially when its bulldozing chug is supplemented with staccato synth stabs capable of giving listeners whiplash. Wall doesn't stop there, however, but instead ups the ante with drop-outs, build-ups, and an escalating intensity that makes the track the EP's most rave-ready. As if that's not enough, Stroboscopic Artifacts' Xhin stops by to fashion a predictably boundary-pushing remix of dizzying future-techno that thunders for seven headstrong minutes and somehow manages to be simultaneously robotic and animalistic whilst doing so.
“Expecting Different” splatters its slinky tech-house jack with a plethora of clatter and noise, inviting comparisons to foundsound and Microcosm in the process, before gradually dialing up the funk factor when not drenching the tune in blasts and splashes. The digital bonus “Cosmic Kick” flows as slinkily and digs perhaps even more deeply into its roiling techno groove than “Expecting Different.” The EP's other remix comes courtesy of Splatter whose lethal once-over of “Expecting Different” includes a crushing groove that makes Wall's seem positively dainty by comparison. Splatter's pure madness plays like Hyde to Wall's Jekyll, and Out Of Fire is all the better for it.March 2012