Thursday 29 September 2016

Douglas Deep 'Cytokinesis' Review








Artist: Douglas Deep




Title: Cytokinesis




Label: Self Release




Released: 23rd Sept









Steve Kelly has been airing his show ‘The Shed Collective’ under the pseudonym Douglas Deep on Boxfrequency.fm on Monday nights ever since I joined the station. I’d never got around to listening to the show and wrongly assumed it was all about Deep House.


I spoke to Steve at the station meet up at the Hoxton in Shoreditch earlier this year and he informed me his show wasn’t placing the focus on Deep House but mostly Electronica, I.D.M, Minimal & Ambient Techno with influences such as Autchere, Plaid and Aphex Twin. While earlier his musical background was listening to metal and hip-hop. In fact his show next Monday focuses on U.K. hip-hop between the years of 88 to 93.


Since then I’ve tuned into a couple of shows and found that Steve’s tastes do cross certain parallels with my own. This release like his show is a bit of a mixed bag ranging from Ambient Electronica to Minimal Techno so it partially fits the criteria of this blog.


The album begins with ‘Don’t Talk About It’ a springy tech number with the compulsory snares and featuring spoken samples about electronic music fitting to the title before an old skool sounding sequence joins in and the piece ticks all the boxes required. The following track ‘Andyou’ drops the mood with ambient synth voices and short cropped vocal samples layered over crisp I.D.M. style beats again there’s somewhat of a retro feel.


The title piece ‘Cytokinesis’ begins with a melancholic piano but lifts the pace slightly with the beat. Whilst dropping little samples and fx throughout and the overall the accumulated sound works for me. Following on is ‘Fortunate’ a minimal techno number I don’t really review this type of music and confess I don’t really know where to start.  All I can say is although this may not be on the play lists of the superstar D.J.’s, However, I do hear plenty of this music, it has the right bounce and wouldn’t go amiss in  the sets my friends play.

Moving on the next piece ‘Titan Juice’ begins with an atmospheric field recording of background chatter (possibly recorded in a vape store), to me the volume of the chatter was a tad high compared to the music but the overall mood works well and soon after a beat is employed to accompany the track. This is followed by ‘Fathers Day’ which begins with a fusion atmospheric synths, a low volume wub and crisp beats. Angelic voices, minimal piano and a sample of a child announcing ‘electronic music’ join the assemblage.


Heading towards the close of the album ‘Plastic’ begins in a soothing ambient electronica fashion and is soon accompanied by a trip-hop style beat. Rather than continuing to glide downwards to conclude the album the pace lifts again with ‘Your Mum’ which reminds me somewhat of early Underworld.


I have no idea how long Steve has been making music but he’s putting together some reasonably good replications of the music he loves and inputs a bit of retro feel to his productions at times. Furthermore it’s a snip at only £4 so there’s nothing to lose in having a listen.


Reviewed by Woodzee


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