With end of year lists approaching and people compiling notes on releases worthy of charting, yet trying to keep room for some late run entries, it’s impossible not to look at every new release now without holding it up to the light. Listening to Run, one of the first things that struck me was that my own end of year lists weren’t going to have to be shuffled around, but that’s not to say that there aren’t some favorable qualities about the release. While Paul Ritch’s last release wasn’t the producers best effort, teaming up with old techno hand and compatriot D’Julz shows the two work remarkably well together.
“Run” is a big room techno track in every way. From the steady stream of reverb sent swirling out into the ether to the suspense-filled strings hovering over the track like brooding vultures, “Run” is made for filling cavernous places and shifting the structural foundations of smaller ones. It is punctuated by loose, military style snares and a patch of vocal, clipped into incoherence and looped and pitched to resemble the effects of a pulsing strobe. 2000 and One’s “Dark Tec Mix” sums itself up succinctly, paring back the hurried fervor of the original to stamp out more of a defined groove over mechanical, jacking drums and bouncy, minimal techno bass. Both of these tracks are effective floor cuts, though as they tread such familiar ground they ultimately feel dispensable. The Visionquest remix takes a different approach, dealing out some heavy analogue synthesis in a mid paced, jacking Chicago house vibe. The young supergroup (here featuring Seth Troxler, Lee Curtiss, Ryan Crosson and Shaun Reeves) may sport an advantage with extra sets of ears to donate to their remix, but they effectively run away with the line honors here.
