For his third outing on the Klasse Wrecks label, DJ Steve serves up his Reality EP, four slices of unadulterated club vibes for the adventurous DJ out there. Continuing the label’s and his own inevitable drive of delivering quality music.
To Be Real opens up the A-side, the question asked, does this sample Cheryl Lynn? From listening a few times, it doesn’t appear to be Cheryl, but there is a To Be Real-vocal sample utilised throughout the track, playfully pitched up and down, linking with some light housey stabs which have an ‘almost-but-not-quite-rave’ feel to them. The track moves along with cheery gated synths and is a very cool opener; some may not like the use of the vocals, but others will love them and that’s the joy of music, right?
Moving into blippy break-ish sounds, Universes is an absolutely superb workout, the opening of the track being entirely beat-less for just over two minutes, as the bleeps, pads, low bass and hints of acid all gradually find their space, before a metallic broken drum pattern kicks in. The pacing of the sounds here is sensational, the word “lush” was invented for tracks like this, everything is just supremely worked and all the sounds combine to give an overall fuzzy-head feeling. Brilliant, simple as that.
Flipping the wax over and there are further choppy beats as we delve into Open Yourself To Truth, the title being used as a low, slightly robotic vocal snippet that makes itself known through the track, the same voice also telling the listener to ‘free your mind’ and who can argue with that? There’s a wicked low rolling acid bassline and almost vocal-like pad sound which floats over the whole thing like an eerie audio mist. As the pad drops out, the acid takes over, switching the track from a spacey groove to one with a tough punch. This is, again, a fantastically produced cut, which balances the smoothness of the pads with the energy of the acid and percussion in really excellent style.
Closing the EP is Y.T.O, initialising a repeating vocal clip of ‘you’re the one (for me)’, which is the only bit of vox featured here. The percussion shuffles along underneath a panning synth sound, with another variation of acid featured here, this time an angular, as opposed low-rolling, acid refrain, rubbing up against a very cool synth line that weaves in and out of the other sounds. Perhaps not quite as punchy as the A2 and B1 cuts, but another excellent dancefloor-aimed jam, which does exactly what it needs to do in just over 5 mins, keeping the focus strictly on the energy.
Overall, this is a brilliant club EP and another winner from the Klasse Wrecks stable.
DJ Steve Reality EP is available now via Klasse Wrecks.
Words by Al Bradley
Torture the Artist 