Ein Kleiner Schelm: Your Move EP

Ignore the bizarre penchant for masks that this German producer tends to dabble with in his scintillating live sets – in the studio it’s his music that grabs hold of your attention, and sustains the iron grip up to the final moments of every single track – even at its more serene and lazy. This brand new EP is no different.

Your Move kicks off proceedings with a sensationally lazy, swirling patter of deep – minimalistic techno breaks and an equally mesmerizing chime, ever deepening, until they finally unravel and remake themselves into crisp tech-house dubstep and subtly cut-up breaks at the 3:20 mark. With the journey only half-way complete, the track winds on from there in serenely beautiful fashion.

Dedicated to Ein Kleiner Schelm’s late lamented pet poodle, herself named after a character in his favorite novel, Nikita Nezvanova is playful, funky, eclectic tech-house that weaves in and out of moments before finding a scorching club groove at 2:20, with no sense of a rush whatever.

Caesar goes all dark, melodramatic and orchestral, shades of Isao Tomita – sustained by restrained breakbeats, and an undercurrent of jazz/electro inflections. Thinking person’s techno under any other name, it’s assured and hypnotic stuff.

The final track, a Little Nobody remix of Oddly Automobile, is also the most up-for-it – a funky, simple, jazzily banging number that could be called a post-modern take on Detroit techno shaken and stirred with disco, but in reality otherwise defies classification and teases the listener as it slowly settles into a wonderful locked groove.

Your Move EP is techno house music that’s been constructed outside the confines of the contemporary dance music ring, then unmasked for all to see, hear – and feel.

Styles: Tech House, Minimal, Techno, House