Boston’s underground has always seemed to thrive slightly away from the obvious routes, and Vermilion Sun Records continues to offer a glimpse into that world with its second release. This time, the label turns to Cutty—also known as Cutwoes, Gummies Records boss and Steep co-founder—whose relationship with club music stretches across producing, DJing, promoting, and running labels. For VSR002, Cutty found himself immersed in the music of David Duriez and DKMA, deliberately chasing a sound that felt removed from the pristine edges of contemporary production. Every track was recorded to tape and passed through analogue processing both before the mix and after mastering, leaving the record with a warm, slightly weathered character that feels lived-in rather than polished. Across the EP, Tech House becomes a loose framework for ambient, tribal, dubby, psychedelic, and progressive ideas to move freely within.
“Lilies In October” opens the record almost weightlessly. Gorgeous ambient waves slowly emerge before the rhythm begins to reveal itself underneath, as though the dancefloor is gradually appearing through the mist. Rolling percussion and tribal-infused grooves eventually take hold, but the atmospheric elements never disappear entirely, hovering around the edges and giving the track a wonderfully hazy sense of depth. The analogue treatment feels particularly at home here: sounds blur gently into one another, edges feel softened, and the whole thing carries the warmth of a record that could easily have been discovered rather than newly released. Dreamy without drifting away and driving without becoming forceful, “Lilies In October” eventually returns to those ambient waters, dissolving almost as gently as it arrived.
On the flip, Wiersma takes “Wooden Rollercoasters” and sends its hypnotic foundations somewhere altogether more playful and physical. Funk and swing ripple through the remix, its loose, bouncing rhythm creating the sensation of a groove constantly bending, stumbling, and finding its feet again. There’s something refreshingly imperfect about its movement—the antithesis of overly quantised, surgically clean club music—and within the context of Cutty’s fascination with the warmth and character of earlier House and Tech House, that looseness feels particularly fitting. Wiersma doesn’t simply add pressure to the original; he finds movement in unexpected places, turning years spent on dancefloors into an instinctive conversation between rhythm and body.
Together, the two cuts reveal much of what makes VSR002 so appealing. “Lilies In October” travels from ambience into rolling tribal hypnosis and back again, while Wiersma’s “Wooden Rollercoasters” finds its character in funk, swing, and restless movement. Beneath both lies an appreciation for club music that doesn’t need to sound spotless to feel timeless—music with texture, warmth, and just enough imperfection left intact. Different routes, perhaps, but both ultimately lead towards the same place: heads down, eyes closed, and completely surrendered to the groove.
Words by Holger Breuer
Torture the Artist 