Tensnake
The rise of Hamburg’s Marco Niemerski, aka Tensnake, has been slow but sure. And to anyone familiar with his work over the years, it is also more than a touch inevitable. This year has seen “Coma Cat”, with its irresistible conga melody, vocal hook, and jacking rhythm, explode in clubs worldwide. Originally released in January on the small, Munich-based Permanent Vacation imprint (a label that has become something of a dance connoisseur’s choice with a string of consistently excellent Balearic/disco releases), it was picked up by the mainstream crossover vehicle Defected in June. Meanwhile, his remix of Azari & III’s “Reckless (For Your Love)” has become one of the most hotly anticipated of 2010, based on just a minute-long snippet on Tensnake’s Soundcloud site with what seemed to be a sample from C&C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”, of all things. (More …)
Azari & III
Azari & III seemed to emerge from nowhere last year: fully formed club iconoclasts with an aesthetic both sonically and visually arresting. Their two singles, “Hungry For The Power” and “Reckless (With Your Love)”, reveled in sleazy sexuality, both dangerous and alluring: these were songs that prowled like predators on night time city streets. Flamboyant male diva vocals, courtesy of Fritz Helder and Starving Yet Full (née Cedric Gasaida), sung lyrics that flirted with S&M and nodded at the specter of AIDS. The accompanying video to “Hungry For The Power” was an American Psycho-meets-Paris Is Burning fantasia explicit enough to be banned by YouTube. The classic Detroit feel of the crisp hi-hats, sexily bumping 808s and judicious synth melodies were enough for the songs to be mistaken, on first listen, for lost ’90s house classics, but they were also far more than mere period pieces. Remixes for the likes of Booka Shade, Voltage and Mano Le Tough followed; and, after a superb set at the London Electronic Festival on a damp day in East London’s Victoria Park, the two men behind the project – Christian Farley, aka Dinamo Azari, and Alphonse Lanza, aka Alixander III – sat down to uncover some of the mystery behind the band. (More …)
