electrobuzz product review for:
Efdemin – Chicago
Dial maintain a very respectable run of releases with the second album from one of Berlin’s more interesting house heads, Phillip Sollmann aka Efdemin. Whether solo or as Pigon with Oliver Kargl, he’s always ensured a richly detailed and classically informed take on house music, incorporating a DJ/producer’s innate sense of groove with a listener’s ear for filigree intricacies. It’s these twin factors that lend ‘Chicago’ such a gracefully mature gait and developed dancefloor narrative, creating lucid scenes like the sophisticated ‘Night Train’ with its elegant bassline swing and gently active atmospheres or the exquisitely crafty NSI.
Style enhancemnts of ‘Oh My God’. Meanwhile ‘There Will Be Singing’ gives tribute to the titular city with that refined Berlin take on its qualities, filtering the lushest elements through a clean, white, minimalist frame of reference. Again, the fizzing rhythmic activities of NSI spring to mind on ‘Nothing Is Everything’ and the albums longest statement ‘Wonderland (The Race For Space)’ glides home with sub cushioned shimmies and a delicate percussive lilt that Villalobos would be proud of. Connoisseurs of real high end European house have nothing to fear here.
