Chicola joins Plattenbank’s roster with two high-quality techy cuts, while co-label-boss Guy Mantzur turns in a breathtaking remix.
It’s a bold move to call a track ‘Accperience’, especially if it’s a slice of acidic techno – at the very least it needs to kick some serious ass. Thankfully, Chicola delivers here, with slamming percussion and a chunky, swaggering bassline meeting cool 303 lines and vocal samples, and layers of wavering synths, as Chicola steers a path through a series of clever peaks and drops.
‘Addikted’ is cut from the same cloth, with the bassline asserting itself even sooner, and the mood set by dubby echoes and a sparse melodic hook. The breakdown combines drifting pads and metallic scrapes, before a twisted loop rises up and sets up the second half of the track, Chicola creating a total goosebumps-moment as the bass and kicks suddenly reappear.
Guy Mantzur’s remix picks up some of the tuned percussion loops and synth-work from Chicola’s original, but he builds his interpretation of the track around crunchy breakbeats and hefty bass tones. But it’s the key changes that really first clue you in to the very different vision of the track that Guy Mantzur is presenting, and soon the layers of delicate, hypnotic melodies shimmer into view. The result is nothing short of exquisite, yielding a deeply emotional hit.
Chicola’s been on a real roll recently, with releases on Lowbit, Lost & Found, Tulipa, Sudbeat, and Slideways all rightly making a stir, and this fantastic outing for Plattenbank keeps his momentum up nicely. That said, it’s the sheer beauty of Guy Mantzur’s version of ‘Addikted’ that really has me, um, addicted here.
