What more can be said about 2016 for Red Rack'em apart from MASSIVE? In March, he released the instant classic Wonky Bassline Disco Banger which has been one of the biggest selling house tracks of the year, picking up praise and plays across the board from Moodymann, The Black Madonna and MCDE right through to Disclosure and Mark Ronson.
Repeated Radio 1 plays, festival bookings and licensing from Classic soon followed. WBDB was the first single taken from the Self Portrait LP which is due out in Feb 2017 but before that we have another preview of the first full Red Rack'em long player in the form of Tomato Pope.
Tomato Pope is a slamming party banger. Somewhere between house, techno, African music and broken beat, the drums are driving, the bassline is huge and the vocal samples get mangled throughout the track. It's another guaranteed floor wrecker from Red Rack'em and gives a tantalising taste of the LP weight to follow.
Ocaj is a demented funky leftfield house jam which twist and turns relentlessly like a Scottish broad without power steering. Imagine a hip hip cats jazzy jam session recorded on a ghetto blaster being diced by a hip hop great. The samples get chopped like garlic cloves in a top chefs kitchen. Bon appetite!
Rhodes House closes the single with a dreamy, drifty promise of greater things to come. Named in that super descriptive Red Rack'em style, jazz club samples are meshed with super uplifting Rhodes chops to give you that 'aaah' feeling. You can pull a jazz face to this. It's allowed.
The artwork comes from an old school friend Abby Smith who painted a portrait of Daniel from a facebook screen grab. x
It's been a busy 3 years since Danny Berman aka Red Rack'em released on his own Bergerac imprint.
Since then he's toured relentlessly, released a whole album of live music based disco/punk funk for Sonar Kollektiv as Hot Coins, managed to completely update his biggest track 'In Love Again' to make it a hit the second time around plus released spaced out, wonky party smashers on Wolf Music, Phonica, City Fly and Telefonplan.
While all this was going on Bergerac was largely on ice but now Berman is turning his energy back to the label with a vengeance.
Wonky Bassline Disco Banger is accurately titled. An uplifting intro breaks down into a slamming disco house number and just when you think you know what's going on…
Then the trademark Red Rack'em wonky bass drops in. 150% Guaranteed party smasher…
Jazzy House Extension is super vintage Red Rack'em from around 2004 - something for the jazz heads out there - cracked out piano and far too loud double bass come together to birth a euphoric yet banging snapshot of a producer learning his chops.
Destined is a slightly demented leftfield house number featuring mangled, pitch shifting fretless bass and vocals samples discussing someones destiny.
