JAY TRIPWIRE Schallplatten & CDs

Review: It's hard not to be a fan of Jay Tripwire if you like tech house. The man turns out a consistently excellent line in spaced out sounds that are masterful reduced to only their most core components. Here he steps up to work with John Howard on a pair of superb new tracks for Repeat. The opener, 'Shiva Needs Some Lovin,' is a mix of stiff drum work and coarse snares with more loose and fluid synths. The duality makes for an enticing groove that takes you off amongst the stars. 'Boom Boom' then gets more down the business with hefty, raw drums landing heavy under reverberating leads as drunken bass falls about the mix.

Review: Jay Tripwire's My Life With The Machines compilation series is doing a terrific job of showcasing some of the umpteen early noughties gems buried in his catalogue and archive of unreleased jams. This is volume four (the first three instalments dropped in 2022) and features seven more slabs of intergalactic, wide-eyed, dub-fired tech-house treats. He begins with a sumptuously spacey and loved-up rework of Mothersole & Haris's 'Dumbek', before adding echoing sax sounds and dubbed-out organ lines to a heady early morning groove on 'What Kind of Voodoo Do You Do?', an alternate take on one of his most admired tribal-tinged tracks from 2002. Other highlights include the ultra-deep after-party excellence of 'Smoothin' It Out', the heads-down excellence of 'Smooth Swimmers (Swag Unreleased)' and the warming shuffle of 'Geometry'.

Review: During the early 2000s, Jay Tripwire was responsible for a string of killer records that blurred the boundaries between tech-house, dub-house, deep house, acid and more tribal-tinged flavours. The ongoing 'My Life With The Machines' series taps into this golden period from the Canadian producer, offering a mix of sought-after classics, rarities and unreleased jams from the archives. Highlights are naturally plentiful, with our picks including his deeply sub-heavy, Dubtribe influenced rework of Yabby You dub classic 'King Pharoah's Plague', a tough, TB-303 laden stomp through Marky Starr's 'Disco Freak', the dense-but-rolling deep house funk of 'In Your Mind', and the '4AM at a Californian free party' flex of the accurately titled 'Dope Groove'.

Review: There is a load of Jay Tripwire newness around at the moment and some of it is from his back catalogue and some of it is all new. Here the longtime minimal mainstay and Canadian scene-pioneer serves up a multi-volume collection of cult tracks of his from the early 2000s. They have a west coast tech house sound and are still future in design. The likes of Villalbos have long been banging these and they sit well with the days current underground sound. Acid, dub, tech, electronic soul and more all colour the grooves.