Tag Archives: Trax Couture

Trax Couture has emerged as one of the finest curators of club material over the past year and its latest endeavor, the outward-focused World Series, has only solidified that status. Over the next 11 months (World Series Vol. 1 came from Trax Couture resident/label head Rushmore himself and was released earlier this month), 11 artists from all over the world will be featured in the World Series, their music released on a 3D printed, hand painted USB, as well as a limited edition, three part vinyl series. In a fitting progression, World Series Vol. 2 comes from another Astral Plane fave, tireless Chilean producer Imaabs (both have tracks on our own Heterotopia compilation!), and features a rash of brazen, analogue-sounding club material. The EP doesn’t re-write the handbook Imaabs has been refining since the release of the Baroque EP (out on Diamante) last November, but it does represent a rare diligence that manifests itself in his ability to match disparate elements, the bare kick drum triplets and the raunchy staccato hook are both part of important, organic traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, in a manner that is at once natural and progressive. On Vol. 2 highlight “Grafito”, Imaabs marries dark, warehouse-driven UK techno with Jersey club, with a verve not all that dissimilar to way in which Pearson Sound, Objekt, Peverelist and others mutated dubstep in the mid-2000s. Gaunt and percussive in nature, the track is as close to straightforward techno as the Santiago-based producer has come, but I wouldn’t expect the mans to crossover into the world of purists any time soon. World Series Vol. 2 is out November 28 (this Friday) exclusively at the Trax Couture store.

Premiere: Rushmore – “Silent Melody”

By Gabe Meier

October 13, 2014

New Music

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Throughout a series of free releases and EPs for the likes of Unknown to the Unknown and his own Trax Couture imprint, Rushmore has gained a penchant for crafting the sort of free wheeling club tracks that defy both time and genre. The free “Air Trax” series is the perfect example of the London-resident’s stripped-back approach and resembles something in between the raw, feverous energy of ghetto house and the tightly-wound proficiency of UK techno. Unlike many of his contemporaries Rushmore doesn’t stab at concepts of futurism or technological progress, instead working towards the sort of machine-led dance floor proficiency that originally led to the rise of dance music in Chicago. Rushmore’s newest EP, his third on Trax Couture, is raucous at times, but also sees Rushmore adopt some of the paranoiac spirit that pervades much of the capital city’s output. Kicks, toms and stomp boxes are still in order for much of HOT004, but so are cut up violin bits (akin to Dark0’s recent work) and other video game soundtrack-derived melodic content. “Silent Melody” still embodies the gleeful linearity of Rushmore’s past productions, but trades in ghetto house for Jersey club’s rumbling kick pattern and grime’s melodrama. It’s metallic and slightly obsessive in its repetitious melody, source material drawn directly from post-Olympic East London, but also from the growing figurative diaspora of UK and American club sounds. HOT004 will be out on vinyl and digital on October 20, but can be pre-ordered through the Trax Couture website now.