Surfire Sound’s debut release features two fine beat makers: Eprom and FaltyDL. Both bring a skippy garage-esq variant to the table. San Fransisco resident Eprom brings the source material and New York’s FaltyDL show us his slant. The two share a love for deeply hypnotic bumping garage full of twisted, clattering drums and funky basslines that seem to echo with an otherworldly spectral atmosphere.
FaltyDL gets darker and more spaced out with his take, chopping the drums up into fragmented breaks and making the samples even more ghostly. The bassline gets dubby and smeared into a pulsing buzz while all the other elements shuffle in all directions. The brake-down melts into sub territory before the breaks and a subtle synth melody takes hold again.
Both versions nail it and will serve adventurous DJs well in the clubs, Eprom’s rolling original should get things bumping and FaltyDL’s will shake things up with its spaced out sub heavy bass pressure. It turns out Eprom and FaltyDL are a deadly combination, expect to see more from both.
Cluekid & LD – I Don’t Wanna Cry/Jupiter 9 [Bullfrog Beats] The jungle vibes are strong on this one, emotive diva samples and Detroit techno chords play off some serious 140 jungle experiments with some soul shaking bass. Not unlike Skream’s insane ‘Burnin’ Up’ and last years ‘Monkey Style’ on Subalicious.
Geiom/Hizatron – Bubbles/Von Glooperstine [Berkane Sol] Bag on sight white 12” business from the Notts crew. Geiom comes with a skipping techy bubbler, which sounds not unlike a robot short-circuiting to a garage pulse that switches up into a 4x4 bump. Hizatron takes us on a low-slung bleep’n’gloop tip, minimal in a techno sense but with an ear for fun.
LV ft. Errol Bellot – Don’t Judge/(Fantasic Mr Fox Remix) [2nd Drop] Deep and rootsy excursions into dub: A-side, has lush horns, instrumentation and vocals off-setting the sparse beats and bass. FMF kick up the rhythm section and get squelchy on the bass creating some kind of garage/digidub hybrid.
Quest – Last Dayz/The Unknown [Deep Medi] Some of my favourite anti-social tracks right here, epic slices of deep soundsystem future funk. Those breakdowns take you to another place, while the synths add the energy.
Heny.G – Area 1/Retro Love [Gangsta Boogie] This plate has been on the cards for ages and delayed for to long, but now its hear and takes some seriously funked up dance floor kicks that bring the boogie while the soulful bass and pads bring the bliss.
Brackles – Rawkus/Air Pie [Planet Mu] He’s been unstoppable this year and this 12” is no exception. Mad energetic twisting synths and that broken beat meets garage shuffle he’s so good at along with Shortstuff. Pure dance floor energy from the grey area that brought you future/garage/funky/dubstep/grime/electro/techno/house-U-call-it?
FaltyDL – Party/Alpafun [Ramp] Low down garage funk with plenty of soul and the party vibes to match. Like Ghost moved to New York and started a warehouse party with a house band made of funk legends and free cocktails.
Sully – Reminder/Jackmans Rec [Frijsfo Beats] Bumpin’ garage beats and a rude rough and ready bass pressure that sounds so dark and swung. These tracks have been a long time coming and they still kill it.
The debut album and assorted 12”s from NYC’s Drew Lustman AKA FaltyDL have been some of the highlights of the year, but he’s not done yet there is another trick up his sleeve in the shape of the mini album Bravery. It’s made up of material produced since his album so you only get the freshest beats here, the guy is prolific not many artists manage two albums in a year, mini or not… Plus not only does he manage to keep the quality high but the vibe is totally different, you still get the stuttering lob sided garage meets hip-hop electronica but this time its darker and more organic. The dance floor energy is still there in fact the tempos are even more varied than before.
There is a deep dusk-like feel at work on the opening track ‘Made Me Feel So Right’ with a sweet passionate R&B hook sampled and twisted over dense bass drenched grooves, if Burial was brought up with Flying Lotus in New York you might get something like this, but then you don’t really need that when you have FaltyDL he easily stands out on his own. You get that NY feeling from a lot of FaltyDL’s music, I’ve not been or anything but everyone has some kind of image in their heads of NY and ‘Mother Beam’ defiantly gives me that vibe with its jazzy chords, hip-hop tempo and the fact a chopped up and screwed vocal says ‘Drew Lustman, Live In New York’ a few times.
The title track takes this vibe into the club in a spaced out disco meets hip-hop sort of way it really gets its bounce on. The filtered R&B vocals, which are all over this album, sound so familiar but they’ve been tweaked out of context so brilliantly that they take on a new life of their own. ‘Play Child’ has a similar feel again, an echo-chamber space disco sort of thing. All the time on Bravery you get the feeling things are progressing, the flow works so well.
Things up in tempo even more with ‘Tronman’ which has an almost dubstep speed going on, with rolling broken garage beats and beds of reverb drenched tones that build a lot of tension. Vocals fly at you from all direction and sound like a love letter to the music that influences him somehow. ‘Must Sustain’ gets a little more soulful with a slower groove, this stuff is so hypnotising and dense there is a real dub feel at work, samples and percussive hits get dragged out into mesmerising soundscapes.
Then when you think you’ve been dragged into the underbelly of NY ‘Pressure’ jumps out and makes you want to dance, with its deeply moving sub bass tones, super broken skitting garage breaks, p-funk synth bass and shimmering guitar funk licks that all switch up into some serious full body work out rhythms. Then to end things the acid tinged ‘Discant’, which comes on like a funk variation on old Trax records like Phuture or Mr Fingers via present day NY and Detroit techno and ends Bravery in a stylish flourish.
Love Is A Liability has been up there as one of the albums of the year for me and I really didn’t expect FaltyDL himself to come out and top that before the year was even out, he could of at the very least given someone else a go. But with Bravery that’s what he’s done. This is the sound of someone enjoying and exploring sound, while creating a record that will jump off in DJ sets and sound brilliant at home.
Straight out of New York the ex sushi chef knows how to prepare some tasty beats that kicks like wasabi. Falty DL’s debut album Love is a Liability on the forward thinking Planet Mu, who are dropping quality releases with ease right now is another top class album. Taking influences from across the board from uk garage to techno, hip-hop and electronica Falty DL makes a sound all of his own.
Love is a Liability is skippy high hat heaven you can hear the garage running through its veins but this is only one element of the sound, sometimes sounds of Detroit can be heard thrown in with vibrant electronica and the deep bass of dubstep. It’s got that vintage Planet Mu sound you can sit it next to anything from Mu, Warp and Rephlex and it would stand up on its own yet fits in nice and snug.
Things start with ‘Human Meadow’ with its deep ghostly garage sound complete with pitched shifted soulful vocal snippets and swung hats, the bass and electronic elements really take it into a world of its own though, a melancholic bleepy underworld.
The organ sounds on ‘Dionysos’ and ‘To New York’ really take you into Underground Resistance territory the latter is reminiscent of the other worldly ‘Inspiration’ playing off some ‘Hi Tech Jazz’. Before you get taken into the dark side with ‘Encompass’ with its robotic machine dance sound. Love is a Liability flows so well as a whole and really draws you into a hypnotic state at times. This vibe is really present on the sublime ‘Winter Sole’ with its massive downward bending bass sweep that turns into a huge drone that will sound epic on a big system plus the orchestral moments playing around a subtle spaced out skipping drum pattern really set things off.
The back end of Love is a Liability gets deeper and more hypnotic as it goes on tracks like ‘Truth’ and the pent up soul of ‘Anxiety’ tweak and bleep like a robotic love machine over swung jacking techno garage breaks and big bass, but it’s the melodies in these tracks that really bring the vibes the album is full of them.
Out of the final three tracks, which all have a mellow sadness to them ‘Paradise Lost’ is the one that really nails it. The crackles and sweeps that melt into some organic swung beats and that deep warm building set of pads and synth melodies hits the spot that’s for sure. The jacking post garage electronica of Falty DL with its bittersweet vibes makes for a truly compelling listen. The album is both deep and interesting as well as massive in the dance. Love is a Liability and his Ramp Recordings 12” show he is one to watch.
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Surfire Sound’s debut release features two fine beat makers: Eprom and FaltyDL. Both bring a skippy garage-esq variant to the table. San Fransisco resident Eprom brings the source material and New York’s FaltyDL show us his slant. The two share a love for deeply hypnotic bumping garage full of twisted, clattering drums and funky basslines that seem to echo with an otherworldly spectral atmosphere. 
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