Skylax France Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Skylax has always operated in its own world. The French label has never bowed to - or tried to set - trends, instead it just focuses on traditional house sounds that never go out of fashion. Sting The Floor is another such EP, this time from Floorfillers. The title track opens up with grinding synth phrases over nice loose drums while 'Slammer' is lit up with bright Philly disco strings and hurried house beats. 'That End Song' is a classic end-of-the-night piano house jam and 'Take A Blast' layers up gurgling acid with low slung drum swings. 'We Are In The House' is the breezy closer complete with bendy guitar riffs. A nice diverse EP for sure.

Review: Rennie Foster is a real old school head who has been turning out a wide range of club ready sounds for many years. Skylax is similar in that it has been consistently turning out timeless tunes from assured names for ages. 'Let It Go' opens up with a dark and nagging vocal sample of rickety drums that are moody and low slung. 'Just Do It' brings some trademark breakbeats and rattling metallic texture and then master Japanese minimalist Ken Ishii remixes into something more head twisting. Last of all is Sean Deason remixing 'Let It Go' with a thumping low end.

Review: Wax Classic presents a collaborative 12" from French duo Groove Boys Project and Novaj, which maintains the label's sharp instinct for the finest deep house money can buy. Across four tracks they explore the depth and breadth of the sound, touching on early Italian dream house vibes on the gorgeous 'Amore' before bringing a sweaty late night exuberance to 'Night In Rimini'. 'Taste Of Heaven' returns to the sweet, soulful sway of grandiose pads and twinkling piano lines primed for the warm up, and 'Mondo Paradiso' taps into the deeper end of the Nu Groove legacy without missing a beat.

Review: Attention banger alert! Parissior is a Spanish DJ producer who has been producing countless tracks for many years now. His style could be described as a mix of dark disco, indie dance, Italo, and trance, but personally we think it goes much further. He has a total mastery of the art of production (something we have rarely seen); it seems more like sound design it sounds so huge. He's managed the perfect EP - one that all the Italian indie dance producers, one that even the biggest names in the genre have thus far failed to create. There's nothing cheesy about it; we've been listening to his music non-stop since we received it, with no weariness in sight. This guy is monstrous. The 12" begins with the brilliant 'Antennae', which is the perfect mix of Italo new wave & trance, followed by 'Canes Venatici', which could've been created by Daft Punk if they'd chosen to be less commercial. and put their balls on the table instead of hiding behind masks. 'Ceres' and 'Alpha Apodis' follow the same line. This maxi is gigantic - a f%c$ing masterpiece.

Review: Second time around for Chez Damier's superb remixes of Simoncino classic 'Inga's Creme', which first surfaced way back in 2011 as part of The Warrior Dance Part 2 mini-album. On the A-side you'll find Damier's 'Club Mix' - a superb chunk of Prescription style peak-time deepness in which hazy, echoing synth sounds, ultra-deep pads and echoing spoken word snippets cluster around a locked-in, late-night groove. Side B opens with Damier's 'Morning After Mix Part 1', an even deeper and more dubbed-out interpretation tailor-made for misty-eyed sunrise sessions. It's followed by the 'Morning After Mix Part 2', a previously unreleased ambient house style interpretation built around gorgeous chords, bubbly melodies and slowly building percussion.

Review: Originally released early last decade, Simoncino's four-part The Warrior Dance series boasted a mix of inspired original productions and superb remixes. This 12" contains four of the best remixes, all of which first appeared between 2010 and 2012. Ron Trent's EP-opening revision of 'The Warrior Dance' is little less than analogue deep house perfection - all sparse drum machine beats, bittersweet chords, sci-fi synth sounds and the producer's usual emotive piano motifs - while Gene Hunt's take on 'Do It Again' is hypnotic, bass-heavy and reminiscent of Larry Heard's most bittersweet early works. Merwyn of Virgo Four drops two takes on 'Mystery Girl': a raw, analogue-rich deep house main mix, and a sparse, jacking and groove-based Dub.

Review: Modern Italian deep house legend Simoncino returns for the 'Distant' EP, a fresh seven-tracker once more inspired by the classic Chicago and New York house sound, as is par for the course for this artist. A vintage va-va-voom is heard splayed across the septet, with the opener 'Distant' seemingly lowpassed at at least 16k, and ensuers 'Smoke Channel', 'Fantasy' and 'Tributes' equally revelling in such trace sonic irony. Despite the novelty of lo-fi house, there's a wicked hi-fi remix by Mr Fingers on there, proving Simoncino's thoroughly-rubbed shoulders and proximity to the pulse of history.

Review: Way back in the early 2000s, Hardrock Striker's (now dormant) Parisonic Records imprint debuted with a pair of EPs that breathed new life into classic cuts from 'Makossa Man', Manu Dibango. To celebrate the series' 20th anniversary, the Paris scene veteran has decided to bring back Soul Of The Makossa Man, this time via an EP containing four cover versions/sample-heavy productions. Simncino steps up first with 'Tribal Spirit Mix', a percussion rich hybrid dub disco/sturdy house number, before FTG delivers the hypnotic deep house excellence of the 'Deep In The Jungle Mix'. FTG returns to close the EP with the hybrid electronic/organic brilliance of the 'Afro Manimal Mix', while the 'Studio 937 Mix' by Groove Boys Project sounds like an unlikely collaboration between Dibango and the Burrell Brothers.

Review: Thus spake Zaratustra, who clambered down from his mountain lair after ten years of brooding and solitude to let the people of the meadows and grasslands know of the true nature of reality; the overman, aka. Stolt. Nietzsche references aside, this new release by French disco artist Zaratustra, in collaboration with singer Stolt, is a riveting take on electro-disco-Italo; 'Uprising' is a ricocheting heater of immeasurable proportions, channelling the spirit of hi-NRG and new wave in its vocal shrieks, eighth-note bass runs and gated splashy snares. A veritably worthy addition to Skylax's LAX series.