Articles
2009 Top 10s and 20s
King Midas Sound
Starke

Albums
36
Aardvarck
Matias Aguayo
Anaphoria
Anduin
Arbol + Fibla
Aufgang
Beneva vs. Clark Nova
Black to Comm
Bvdub
Cornstar
Dinky
Enola
Fieldhead
FOURM / Shinkei / Turra
Billy Gomberg
The Green Kingdom
Chihei Hatakeyama
Ian Hawgood
Marek Hemmann
Khate
King Midas Sound
Marcel Knopf
Robot Koch
Lambent
Shinobu Nemoto
Olekranon
Laurent Perrier
Piano Magic
Porzellan
Pylône
Ryonkt
Shadyzane
Slow
Small Color
Solomun
The Sound of Lucrecia
Stray Ghost
The Use of Ashes
Sylvie Walder

Compilations / Mixes
Sebo K
Will Saul
Tama Sumo
VOLTT Amsterdam Vol. 1

EPs
Blindhæð
Roberto Bosco
Franco Cangelli
Dieb
dub KULT
Abe Duque/Blake Baxter
Gemmy
Christopher Hobbs
Duncan Ó Ceallaigh
Christopher Roberts
The Sight Below
Two Fourteen
Van Der Papen
Andy Vaz
Vetrix
Eddie Zarook

DVD
Optofonica

Abe Duque feat. Blake Baxter: What Happened?
Process Recordings

If What Happened? is any indication, Abe Duque and Blake Baxter clearly have a bone to pick with, well, pretty much everybody and everything in the dance music business—or at least they did five years ago when the cut first tore up dancefloors in 2004. Apparently disgusted by what they deemed the paint-by-numbers state of the prevailing techno and house scenes, Duque and Baxter responded by channeling their vitriol into a steamy slice of wax that proved so memorable it warranted a revisit.

In the original mix, Duque stokes a skeletal house bump into a raw and snappy broil with a booty bass pulse, while Baxter first sets the scene (“Remember back in the day / The underground was truly the underground / People weren't tryin' to make hits / People were about it / No name droppin,' it was just straight-up underground club hoppin'”) before calling out once-legendary locales (Paladium, SONAR) and genres (acid, techno, drum'n'bass) as guilty parties (for the record, it must be noted that there's some small degree of irony in play when the track itself fits fairly snugly within the scenes and genres targeted). Along for the ride, remixer Marc Romboy's “retro re-rub” then tweaks the tune into a swizzling and occasionally fidgety barn-burner without altering Baxter's bitchin' and moanin'; Max Cooper, on the other hand, splinters Baxter's vocal into incoherent shards while holding things together with a lithe tech-house rhythm attack.

December 2009