EP Review: Finders Keepers Remixes - David Shaw and The Beat

David Shaw caught my attention towards the end of last year when his debut album So It Goes established his talent for genre-surfing and culture-riffing. So It Goes opened with the laissez faire but rather convincing Finders Keepers, as one of the highlights on the album it isn't much of a surprise to see it get the remix treatment.

This release comes with two mixes - one from La Royal and Yesco and the other from Richard Fearless. Surprisingly the original doesn't feature - a bit of a missed opportunity for Shaw to bring people into his album given that it's still quite distinct from either of the versions here.

La Royal applies a sinister dance floor disco rub to the track, creating a dark throbbing techno vision of lasers and distorted bass. The vocal is placed disorientatingly high in the mix, with Shaw seemingly coming from somewhere beyond the rest of the music, almost like we are all just tiny dancers in his mind.

Richard Fearless' mix is both typically analogue and typically fucked up. It's a claustrophobic, growled threat of a record, full of abrasive synths and electronic gurgles and clicks. Fearless' production style suits Shaw's camp, knowing vocal treatment, creating a cool, aloof record.

If you didn't pick up So It Goes this serves as a pretty good reminder as to why you should check it out.

​Finders Keepers Remixes is released on Monday through Her Majesty's Ship, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link].

Single Review: Pledge Allegiance - The Rimshooters vs Snax

This new release on Her Majesty's Ship sees the Rimshooters duo team up with Snax to create a sassy little house twelve.

The slightly disturbingly named Rimshooters are Massimilliano Pagliara and DJ Rotciv. After meeting via social media back in 2010 they started working together despite the massive geographic distance between them, with Pagliara living in Berlin and Rotciv in Brazil. They've since got together and are based in Europe.

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Pledge Allegiance - The Rimshooters vs. Snax

Snax hails from the US but having travelled from Washington D.C. To San Francisco and then New York he is now also in Berlin. With a number of quality tracks to his name he's an artist worth following - 'Honeymoon's Over' in particular was a bit of a classic, a tight, funky and minimal house record.

'Pledge Allegiance' was originally started as a melancholic house record but somehow ended up being transformed into the ass-wiggling electro-disco record it is now. The track is pretty restrained - aside from Snax's vocal it's fairly unfussy, with a squelchy bass and simple drum patterns emphasised with some hand claps. It's Snax's personality and Prophet 5 synth solo that steal the show though - this is a record that takes off it's business suit to reveal a spangly two-piece silver bikini.

There are two remixes included in addition to the original. The Rimshooters acid dub loses the Prophet 5 synth in place of a fairly straight forward acid line - a little formulaic in comparison to the original. Snax is given control for the final mix, unleashing his new moniker Box Office Poison, for a dub. With a chaotic, echoey, strung-out vibe it manages to out-shine and out-weird the original - it's a muted, atmospheric and spaced out track that suggests Snax has a fair amount of talent.

It may not be quite the tentpole release that 'Honeymoon's Over' was but 'Pledge Allegiance' is good all the same.

Pledge Allegiance is released through Her Majesty's Ship on Monday, preview it below:

Album Review: So It Goes - David Shaw And The Beat

David Shaw's debut album opens in one of the most assured fashions I've ever heard. 'Finders Keepers' demonstrates no urgent need to make an impression: the hollow analogue synth and taught rhythm guitar build the first two minutes out to perfection, so when the beat actually drops it feels like you might be three tracks in - receptive and welcoming what follows.

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So It Goes - David Shaw And The Beat

Born and raised in Manchester but transported to Paris for his teenage years David Shaw has clearly been influenced by both sides of the pond. Having played with Black Strobe on guitars, bass and keyboard there is both a suave Parisian and a cool post-punk Mancunian itching to get out here.

Shaw performs an excellent revision of The The's 'Infected' - pulsing synth-work punctuating a deep bass line beneath Shaw's sensuous vocals. Similarly 'No More White Horses' is an unrelenting electro-funk strut - here especially Shaw feels like a European imagining of Tiga and it's hard not to love the big, reverb-drenched drums. And that is all just in the first three tracks.

Shaw is clearly caught up with cult scenes. I hoped the album was named after Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. It turns out it isn't - at least not directly - but it comes from the next best thing, taking inspiration from Manchester icon and Factory Music creator Tony Wilson (after his TV show of the same name). And elsewhere 'Single Serving Friend', with it's robotic percussion and sleazy bass, clearly references Chuck Palaniuk's Fight Club (or at least David Fincher's movie adaptation).

It is almost all a bit much. The only real criticism to be levelled at Shaw's debut album is that it all begins to sound fairly similar towards the end. It lacks a natural flow or any real breaks in momentum beyond the very interlude in the form of 'North Wnd Does Slow' shortly before the end. This is an album without punctuation - taken in individually the material all stands repeated listening, it is only as a consistent whole that things can feel overwhelming. When it is good, as on the low-slung 'Like Swans', with its vocals placed lower in the mix and the analogue synths exuding cool, it all works perfectly.

So It Goes is out now through Her Majesty's Ship, available on CD and MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links].