- Production quality isn’t everything. Billed as a “beefed up” version of ‘Compressed Roots’, which was released in limited numbers on Rush Hour last year, ‘Primary Roots’ is obviously the work of youthful producers—the bass is slightly too bulbous, the structure a bit ramshackle—but when you’ve got ideas this good, that’s hardly a dealbreaker. Put simply, this is enormous. Brimming with ideas and a kind of naïve sense of delight at the possibilities of techno, ‘Primary Roots’ is all stomp and shimmer: a low end that stops and starts like a lost tourist in New York, and a high end made from shards of synthesizer that bounce off the architecture like sunlight. But the peaks are at the three- and six-minute points when those synths jump up an octave: suddently the track seems, like a stop-motion shot of a busy city street, both rushed and slowed at the same time. Pure energy.
On the flip, Redshape’s remix is louder, harder, and yes, more technically well produced, but somehow—as with a lot of Redshape productions—it’s also slightly monotonous and joyless. Where the original was tentative, this is relentless, replacing Yuro & Trago’s casual alignments with a straight-ahead Detroit-ish pulse. Not that the dancefloor will mind, of course, but if you’re after something less slick and more innocent, stick with the A.
TracklistA Primary Roots
B Primary Roots (Redshape Clear Mix)