Artist : Phonic Scoupe
Title : Love & Hate EP
Label : Stripped Recordings
Cat : [135-SR]
Release : Jan 13 2014
Genre : Techno/Tech House
Review by Andy Howarth
Stripped Recordings hit us up with a new EP from Phonic Scoupe for 2014. If you’ve never heard of them, don’t worry, they’re a new trio of producers from Lithuania and havn’t released much to date.
The title track ‘Love & Hate’ marries punchy beats with filtered synths throughout, and it’s clear they’ve been putting the hours in with regard to the quality of production. There’s precious little in the way of a breakdown, with the guys preferring to focus on developing the rolling beats.
From here, ‘Love In Space’ takes us on a slightly deeper path, whilst retaining the proggy elements of the lead track. There’s an almost Trancey riff that is remeniscent of some of the main-room material that was so prominent around the 2003/4 era. That’s no bad thing though, as it compliments the track quite nicely and certainly ramps up the ‘epicness’ to do justice to the big-room feel of the record.
Closing out the EP is ‘Aliens In My Bed’, a warm crunchy number that begins with plenty of promise, and then sadly dashes them all with a supposedly otherworldy synth line (hence the name) that just did nothing for me i’m afraid.
|ll in all, it’s a reasonable effort that’s very well made, but sadly lacking on the memorable stakes. Head for ‘Love In Space’ out of the three tracks, it’s a nice chuggy Prog House effort and one that would sound suitably impressive over a big sound system.