Mancunian house producer Tom Demac hasn’t exactly been on my top producers-to-watch list, but maybe that should change after his first solo release on liebe*detail. Demac’s tracks on the twelve are intensely layered, knotted and labyrinthine to the point where it’s hard to tell what’s going on at any one moment. Despite the disorientation of so much simultaneous movement, Demac manages to pull off some impressive grooves, and both tracks carry enough detail to stay interesting even if you can’t find your way into the groove.
“Ten From Seventeen” pairs curiously dark elements — grumbling vocal samples, downstroke chords and a hell of a psychedelic bass line — with hesitant piano chords that occasionally break out into sunnier progressions. It’s thick and swampy, but if you can immerse yourself in the muck it’s a hell of a propulsive mover. Building on top of another snaking but slightly catchier bass line, “This Is What I Want” is the friendlier side, a more conventional but still slinky beat lightly touched by yearning vocal samples. But Demac clouds it with chords that stretch over like cheesecloth, gently obscuring the groove and blurring the elements together just slightly, a shimmering mirage of a track that still retains some physicality from its low-end: again, disorienting.
The EP also provides two remixes of “Ten From Seventeen” for less convoluted takes on Demac’s music. Iron Curtis pries apart its tight constructions, wisely keeping the bobbing bass line but throwing it under a more gradual beat and making its chord stabs and vocal samples more predictable: deep house, basically. Soulphiction speeds up the bass line until it’s like a hyperactive ball bearing rolling back and forth, building up heat released as humid waves of steam in his synth-heavy rework, but it’s still a vision of clarity compared to the original. With such dense, complex tracks, Demac presents himself as a genuinely interesting producer, and it’s also the most memorable release related to liebe*detail in ages.
Deliciously good tune.