MACEO PLEX 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Fresh from reworking Remake's 1992 progressive house cover of Vangelis' "Blade Runner" theme, Maceo Plex returns to the Ellum Audio imprint he co-founded with Alta in 2011. This time round, he's got company, too, with veteran Texas outfit Paradigm Shift (whose "Requisition" was featured on Plex's recent Fabric mix CD) lending a hand on title track "Mutant Pulse". It's a typically atmospheric, peak-time-friendly affair, with trippy female spoken world vocals weaving in and out of an alien techno groove and spine-tingling pads reminiscent of the Moby classic "Go". On the flipside, "Mutant Radio" is an altogether darker and more hypnotic interpretation, with spaced-out stabs and ghostly chords accompanying Plex's fuzzy, on-point grooves.

Review: Taking brains to other dimensions for well over a decade now, Maceo returns to wax for the first time this year with two certified brain-melters: "The Tesseract" tackles the complexity of the fourth dimension with a classic rolling drum arrangement wrapped in perplexing layers of bass. "5th Dimension Groove" turns your brain inside out even more as the running groove swoops to sub-frequency levels before a stark bass roar enters the fray and turns everything on its head. Maceo has never been one-dimensional.

Review: Six years have passed since Maceo gave the world his debut album Life Index. In that time he's solidified his status as one of techno's most untouchable soul men who's unapologetically ungoverned by tempos or boxes or any type of formula. He's also become a father, which is what this (and last year's "Journey To Solar") are all about. Rich in sentiment, hope and fear, each cut reveals a deeper layer of Maceo: the star-gazing optimism of "Kepler's Journey", the Bristolesque industrial dub soul of "Indigo", the careful countering of vulnerable emotion and roboticism on "Was Away My Tears", the list goes on. This is Maceo at his most heartfelt and arresting.

Review: Eric Estornel rose to fame a few years ago, from what seemed like out of nowhere. But unbeknownst to many was churning out sleek electro for a long time before as Mariel Ito. But it was with Maceo Plex that he really found his groove with anthems such as "Your Style" and Sleazy Rider". Fast forward to 2015 he's still at the top of his game as a DJ (check the polls) and as a producer as heard striking out on his own imprint Ellum Audio. It sees him temporarily return to his old ways with a chill electro number that ticks all the boxes; vocoder, soaring analogue strings and warm chunky arpeggiated bassline. If that wasn't enough, he flips the script on us again in the form of right techno banger "Solar Detroit" sounding like something on Oscar Mulero's Pole Group. Nice one!

Review: Ever the champion of brains and brawn in equal measure, Maceo Plex makes his debut appearance on Drumcode with this punchy beast of a single. "Conjure Dreams" features plenty of Plex signifiers, from the rounded and rowdy bassline pump to the haunting tone of the synth lines, neatly packaged in a chunky framework of big room drums. "Conjure Floyd" meanwhile burrows into more minimal territory where the tones are amelodic and the percussion takes the lead, calling to mind the restraint and tension of classic M_nus productions where so much could be said with so little.

Review: While most Drumcode releases are suitably sizable, this EP is particularly large - and not just because it features two huge names in Maceo Plex and Josh Wink. Their original version (A1) is predictably robust and rugged with foreboding low register stabs, metallic clangs, druggy vocal snippets and creepy melodies rising above stomping techno beats. It's a genuinely all-action affair that sounds like a massive room anthem in waiting. Over on side B you'll find two re-rubs: a more melodious Raxon remix that sounds like tech-house on steroids and a deeper, darker, trance-inducing techno take by Shall Ocin.

Review: Maceo Plex clearly saw the commission to do a Fabric mix as an opportunity to flex his musical muscles. The Miami-based DJ/producer has delivered an impressively atmospheric and cleverly produced studio mix that cunningly shifts in different directions, opening with 20 minutes of superb deep electro jams (think Sebastopol, Carl Finlow and Jenson Interceptor) before unleashing the producer's more familiar tech-house, techno and new wave selections. From then on, it's a sweaty sprint to the finish with Plex building the tempo and intensity throughout. Along the way, you'll encounter no less than 13 exclusives and unreleased tunes, including a string of previously unheard Fabric dubs from the man himself.

Review: The long-running DJ Kicks series has prospered largely because of the opportunity it gives to well known DJs and producers to showcase the breadth and diversity of their record collections. That's certainly the case with this latest volume from global house superstar Maceo Plex, who impressively opens proceedings with a string of stargazing Detroit electro cuts (see the contribution from DJ Stingray) and atmospheric IDM jams, before peppering the mix with such inspired choices as Charles Webster's sublime, long-forgotten version of Kumbu Kimbra's "Raise The Dead" and Vivandi's decidedly stone cold classic "Racing Tracks". Of course, there's plenty of typically touchy-feely Plexian fodder, but it's far from the mix you'd expect.