Will Saul & Mike Monday: Zippo
Buzzin' Fly

L Kubic: Voyager
Buzzin' Fly

Partners-in-crime Will Saul (boss of Simple Records and Aus Music) and Mike Monday (underground house and techno DJ and producer Michael Mukhopadhyay) hook up for a fresh two-tracker laid down in Monday's Mitcham home-base. The A side's “Zippo Main Mix” gets things rolling by punctuating its clap-happy, bass-bottom feeding pulse with a bleepy, careening house swing until, out of the blue, electronic curlicues spatter and ripple across the incrementally intensifying groove. The infectious cut swells and swells until a mid-song breakdown strips away the layers, exposing the track's skeleton before building it all back up again into a funkily insistent, backbeat-driven raver. Turning the beat around, the accompanying “Zippo Dub” twists the tune into a strutter that's slinkier than the original but no less trippy. It's clearly the A side that's the stunner here, however, with the dub workout a fine but less dynamic treatment. Bleepy techno-funk never sounded so good on this fresh addition to the Buzzin' Fly catalogue.

L Kubic (Berlin-based producer Lars Niekisch, well-known as partner to Frank Herrmann under the name Trick and Kubic) kicks in with a beautiful track of his own in “Voyager,” a funky bottom-feeder goosed by gravelly voice punctuations (“Take me home”), spiky guitar accents, and an irresistibly infectious skipping groove. The cherry on top is the fractured synth theme that intermittently blazes atop the tune's royally chugging pulse and cloudy electronic whooshes. The flip finds long-time Buzzin' Fly resident DJ Chris Woodward manning the controls for a slinky “Voyager” remix. Though Woodward does dims the lights slightly, the tune still asserts itself strongly as a stepping charger and Woodward wisely makes sure the original's synth theme doesn't get lost in the process. Both cuts are solid but Niekisch's pumping original can't help but stand out from the crowd.

March 2009