Artist: Simon Berry & Luke Brancaccio
Title: Wake Up
Label: Circus Recordings
Release date: 16th March 2018 | Pre-order on Beatport
Genre: Progressive / Techno
The scarcity of synchronicity in the universe is what makes events like this a minor miracle in their own right. Seasoned house music producer & technologist Luke Brancaccio (Brancaccio & Asher, Suicide Sports Club and releases on labels as diverse as Bedrock & Defected) and Platipus label boss, Simon Berry (Art of Trance, Poltergeist and part of Union Jack and Clanger) met at a house party near their London homes and form a friendship. They decide to explore a music project and meet at Luke’s studio.
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We braved the arctic blast and ventured up to Glasgow to see the return of Glasgow’s prodigal son, Lars Sandberg (aka Funk D'Void) for a hometown gig on New Year’s EveThey immediately “get each other” and start to quickly produce original tracks and remixes that are immediately hoovered up by such global stalwarts as John Digweed, Sasha, Audiojack, Tensnake, DJ T, CamelPhat & Nic Fanciulli. The support list is a who’s who of house music. Their production sound is, not surprisingly, but certainly amazingly, a distinct melange of their existing sounds which has discernible elements of Platipus and Luke’s own, perhaps deeper but direct style of house music. As the two collide what we end up with is an enhanced, symbiotic style of production that is much unlike anything heard before. Outside of their own spheres of influence, you could perhaps hear shades of Nathan Fake or James Holden but this is a piece of music that is original enough in its heritage and physical being to not be a follower but a leader.
Part club track and part cinematic experience, ‘Wake Up’ is a journey of sound design full of organic goodness and warm round bass, lush strings and other-worldly arpeggios. It’s like opening a little window to another dimension and poking your head through only to be confronted with this beautiful wall of sound. The Doppler style ambients and big echoes are reminiscent, or maybe evocative, of a scene from Bladerunner, the arrangement is a masterclass of going somewhere in no hurry whilst building to a screaming crescendo out of the break. Wake up is 40 years of knowledge and production experience flowing like a stream of collective consciousness.
The Kaiserdisco remix is a fearsome techno interpretation, stripping back to a set of well-chosen parts from the original set against a backdrop of the biggest drum-set I’ve heard in some time. It’s a festival stomper, a no-nonsense window rattler designed as a weapon rather than the slow-burning and thoughtful original. As an alternative version, it works well and has been gathering some major support.
Mella Dee turns in a grooved out head-down techno dance-floor worker, utilising a loop of the arpeggio melody as the main hook, and building a clipped digital sounding club interpretation.
The remix package, in my mind, is a missed opportunity but the original is a monumentally important release that, arguably, steers electronic music back, to some extent at least, to where it should be.
