Deep Impressions

Dance and Electronica with Chris Honnery

German house purveyor Oskar Offermann, a Deep Impressions favourite for: a) his refined take on deep house and b) his coiffure, will headline the Spice Cellar on Saturday December 21. The Frankfurt-born DJ, producer and label owner has established himself over the past eight years with releases on his own labels WHITE and Rimini, along with a particularly impressive collaboration with fellow Frankfurter, Moomin, on the Aim imprint a few years back. Offermann released his debut album last year, Do Pilots Still Dream Of Flying?, which was an accomplished fusion of deep house and songwriting. Featuring ten tracks imbued with subtle melodies, ethereal synthlines and murky vocals, the album wasn’t just a collection of ‘club tracks’. It was, rather, a showcase of Offermann ability to adapt to the long player format with consummate ease. Make sure you give Do Pilots Still Dream Of Flying? a concerted listen if you missed it when it was first released.

Seattle producer Stephen Ford, who has worked under a number of guises over the years – most recognisably as Bruno Pronsato – will release an album under his new Archangel alias in the new year. Once describing his work as “accidentally avant garde”, Ford’s Archangel project focuses on the “human voice as a major element”. Aside from his solo work as Pronsato, Ford’s also been involved in numerous collaborative projects throughout his career. First came Others, his experimental house outfit with Daze Maxim, then there was his work with French artist Ninca Leece – combined the pair were known as Public Lover – who debuted on Ford’s own label thesongsays. Ford has also been involved in the duo Ndf, co-producing the Villalobos-remixed ‘Since We Last Met’, while he continues to collaborate with Perlon luminary Sammy Dee as Half Hawaii. Ford recently released the maiden Archangel EP, Momentum Of The Farce, which featured a cover version of Gary Numan’s ‘Metal’ that Ford says he transformed through his “darker, drone-driven style”. We can expect Ford to explore this style further on the Archangel LP The Bedroom Slant, which will arrive in early 2014.

Italy’sLuca Mortellaro, a published author, experimental sound designer, and most significantly the man behind the ‘Lucy’ moniker, will release his second solo album Churches Schools And Guns in February. Mortellaro rose to prominence when his demo piqued the interest of the man behind the Border Community label, the Australia-bound James Holden. It’s been largely peaches and cream for the Italian ever since with releases on Luke Slater’s Mote Evolver imprint prefiguring the debut Lucy LP, Wordplay For Working Bees on Mortellaro’s own label, Stroboscopic Artefacts. The album was lauded by Resident Advisor as a “fluid ecosystem of club-ready tracks and disparate sketches, dark Berghain-aping techno reanimating hazy memories of early ’90s IDM” in a superlative-laden 4.5/5 review. Mortellaro released an album with Speedy J under the pair’s collective mantle Zeitgeber earlier this year, and his next solo LP is geared towards “misdirection and unpredictability”.

Reclusive UK producer William Bevan, AKA Burial, will release a new EP on the Hyperdub label on Monday December 16. The EP will comprise three new tracks that’ll collectively amount to 28 minutes of music. Bevan’s most recent ‘Truant’ EP comprised two 11-minute structurally experimental tracks, lo-fi soundscapes and emotive melodies, and demonstrated the producer’s talent in creating epic cinematic sketches. The so-called ‘b-side’, ‘Rough Sleeper’, melded mournful melodies, brooding lo-end basslines, plangent vocals and bursts of saxophone to masterful effect, and it’s the profound resonance of this track in particular that propels my enthusiasm to delve into Bevan’s forthcoming EP, which will drop exactly a year to the day of his previous release. Lets call it a year’s work then, shall we?