OK, so this arrived in my inbox earlier, and if you can’t stomach to read through the following few paragraphs I’ve typed but want to know whether you should make the effort and buy this, yes, you should.

Those of you still with us, lets get to it with my track by track review of Isotroph’s EP for Airflex Labs by me using words in some sort of, as far as I can tell, logical order.

Murky depths open up this 5 tracker from Isotroph with title track Passenger, before blossoming into a submerged vocal complete with intricately flavoured beats. Deep and proud, with a switch up of the rhythm midway through. Taking elements from progressive house, adding in a copious amount of icy reverb resulting in a track that is both cold and warming in equal measure, as she develops she ends up more as a chunky dubbed techno composition.

Nenuphar takes things deeper building as she does with broken beats and bold bass stabs, complete with rising ethereal chords of uplifting almost vocal drones. Come the drop and she wonderful, twinkling like an innocent child’s dream of forgotten summers. Yet again Isotroph has paid great attention to the intricacies of the beat programming and it really shines through. As Boomkat put it so elegantly, ‘featherweight 2step‘. I can’t and won’t argue with that.

The 3rd and final original offering from Isotroph entitled Kenya, rolls sub zero style into a restrained bass rich stepper. That synth hitting at 4minutes is doing funny things to my head, tidy, very very tidy.

First of the 2 remixes packaged up with this, the 9th offering from the French label comes from Neat. His release for Airflex Labs, their 8th A Light I Know gave up the mighty Lime & Sugar track. So I’m going into this with high expectations. And I have to say I’m enjoying what I’m hearing. He’s retained the character and depth of Nenuphar but made the beats that little bit heavier, adding a bit more pace as he goes. The result, a hefty track which I can’t wait to hear booming in it’s prowess through a proper sub.

Finally label head and accomplished beat smith opti turns in his Uhuru Peak remix for Isotroph’s Kenya. When she drops with the waves of droning synths washing over you a smile comes to my face and I’m bopping away in time to the drums. What was already a very good EP has just been taken up a notch with this shining example of deep phat coming in on the future garage tip from opti. Five seriously hefty deep rollers with opti’s remix taking the crown.

If you like deep smooth bass, punctuated by deftly placed broken beats then I heartily recommend an instant purchase of this EP.

Isotroph – Passenger EP
GRAB

–
Isotroph – Passenger
Isotroph – Nenuphar
Isotroph – Kenya
Isotroph – Nenuphar (Neat’s bloom remix)
Isotroph – Kenya (opti’s Uhuru peak remix)