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

Tama Sumo: Panorama Bar 02
Ostgut Ton

Tama Sumo looks ever-so-serious staring out from the cover of her Panorama 02 mix CD but appearances can be deceiving. Oh, she's clearly serious about the mix itself—it's as polished and finely cherry-picked as a mix can be—but its sleek blend of techno and house amounts to anything but a lugubrious downer. Well-known for her wide-ranging Sunday afternoon sets at Panorama Bar, the Berlin DJ injects her set with a steamy deep house vibe that's both gritty and sensual. By her own admission, the mix follows a predetermined trajectory with a laid-back beginning slowly building towards ecstatic and pop episodes that she then caps with the inevitable decompression. Spreading twenty-one selections (seven of them exclusives or previously unreleased tracks) over the eighty-minute trip, Sumo doesn't stay in any one place for long, with many stops no more than three minutes at a time.

The mix sets sail on a whispering tip with Tin Man's serenade “Constant Confusion” but the quiet doesn't last long when the banging house pulse of John Daly's “Birds” enters the fray. The lush and soulful deep house vibe that infuses Jenifa Mayanja's treatment of Nina Kraviz's “Voices” and Steffi's “24 Hours” grows funkier with the arrival of Prosumer & Murat Tepeli's “U & I,” John Roberts' “Blame,” and Trus' Me's “W.A.R. Dub” (whose bass line and snappy slink are to die for). The tenth cut, Shed's energized “Stiff Job,” finds the mix now unspooling at a steady broil, while the eleventh, Redshape's mix of Newworldaquarium's “Trespassers,” oozes a nasty snarl and the twelfth, Mike Huckaby's “Wavetable No.9,” shifts the focus to smeary dub-techno. Even when the mix moves into its final third, the intensity level remains high, as the churning tribal-house funk of The Oliverwho Factory's “Together” makes clear. Lest anyone think of bailing early, Sumo slips in a slice of lascivious pop in the form of Ost & Kjex's “Continental Lover” (which undergirds its spooky vocals and piano house chords with a sexy, Booka Shade-styled groove) before teaming up with Prosumer for “Alien Mutts” and then riding out the storm via Soundstream's “All Night.”

December 2009