Andy Vaz: Shadow City
Yore

Recorded by Andy Vaz in Cologne (with additional production by B.troit), Shadow City presents different visions of funky house grooves. The A side's “The "Y" Theme” gets nicely moving with a funky house pulse before stoking the fire with the addition of speaking voices (trippily intoning the Q&A “What are we doing this for?” and “The music”), a move which single-handedly jumpstarts the track. After the voices appear, the groove's intensity escalates and plunges deeper, its gyroscopic house swing becoming more dizzying and torrential with each passing bar before coming to an acidy end. In its opening moments, “Shadow City” opts for a less frenetic and rather more serenading vibe by comparison, but that's traded in for a slinkier attack at the three-minute mark that grows progressively more ferocious as the track makes its dramatic upwards ascent. The B side's other track, “Mumbai Dweller,” keeps the focus primarily on the bottom end, specifically a strutting tribal-house funk groove that's dragged even deeper by a throbbing bass undertow. So nice to hear the Yore captain digging into three clubby cuts that are anything but minimal.

December 2009