[Hotflush Recordings]

With all the justified hubbub and excitement around Machinedrum and his fantastic album Room(s) this year, it’s easy to forget that he’s one half of Hotflush duo Sepalcure. Which is why this after the fact remix EP makes for a good reminder, a little bit of “don’t forget about us” as the duo wrap up work on their promised debut album. Based around the first EP they released back in summer 2010, Love Pressure Remixed is exactly what the title promises. The title track gets the most attention, with three (including digital-only bonus) stabs at it over the course of the five-track EP.

First up is XI, who reinforces the track’s rhythm section and turns it into a braying, top-heavy beast, a dangerously unstable structure — loaded with extra keyboard and synth tones — that glides on the kind of chunky 4×4 garage beat the Toronto producer has been making his trademark lately. Sepalcure’s fellow New Yorker FaltyDL steps up to the plate with a typical remix, turning the track inside out into a fussy, fractured 2-step jam where the vocal samples and melodies get caught up and twisted inside the track’s rapidly revolving spokes. The final remix of the track is Lando Kal’s digital-only contribution, and compared especially to the straightforward approaches of his counterparts, it’s nearly unrecognizable. The Berlin-based producer keeps the vocal samples and twists the track’s sampled percussion into knotted loops, sending it staggering up an ascending progression before falling back down again every time.

L.A. hip-hop weirdo Daedelus gives the soulful “Down” one of his ever-implacable makeovers, burying frantic pianos and excitable vocals in a fog of chords and a beat that sounds like it’s hobbling on one foot as it undergoes way too many transformations in under four minutes. It’s Jimmy Edgar’s turn that’s my favorite, emphasizing the potential “Every Day Of My Life” always had to be a lush and soulful trip. He slows down the tempo for his own robotic take on deep house, and the track’s low sensual dips and swells — paired with vocal moans, of course — establish the same monochrome, autoerotic sexuality that Edgar’s recent work has made its mission. It’s a strange little package, coming a whole year (and another EP) after the original’s release, but with worthwhile contributions from several prominent producers who are all undergoing transitions in their careers (Lando Kal and XI particularly), it makes for an interesting state of the union snapshot anyway.