And finally, The Textbook Lover brings us his currently spinning discs… BLAOW!

 1. 2AM FM – Desolate Cities E.P (Mos Deep)

The latest release from the combined exploits of James T Cotton and D’Marc Cantu continues their exploitation of demanding analogue bass lines and stripped down acid house. ‘Desolate Cities’ stays true to its name sake and paints a picture of a sparse sonic soundscape, resided over by a doom mongering and menacingly vocodered voice track. ‘Give this world’, on the B side, provides a more introspective take, as the warm plodding bass line drives a groove rife with sparkling keys, optimistic pads and a sun-kissed synth solo straight from the free-form funk hand book.

 2. Rick ‘ Poppa’ Howard – Do What You Have To Do (Hour House Is Your Rush)

Rick ‘Poppa’ Howard dives deep with his second release on Hour House is Your Rush as dream level synth rhythms layer up, supported on a delicate combination of subtle bass lines and a mellow drum track. The vocal musters intense soul as it pleads away sporadically, ‘Pick yourself up” he says, as the full symphony of delicately balanced house takes over. Soulful, expertly structured and emotional.

 3. The Otherside ft Musa K – Headless Corpse (Signals)

If you could package sex drive and press it to vinyl, this record would be producing more hard dicks than a truck load of viagra. Fresh Newcastle based label Signals continues its impressive output with this, its second release. ‘Headless Corpse’ is all disco glam, northern soul and dark nights spent in basements, as Musa K flippantly hits us with lines that are sexy in tone but sinister in meaning. The other side, ‘Roadblock’, should be a lesson to the legions of producers making tedious and uninteresting slow disco jams…this is how you do it. Fearsome but unobtrusive vocal chattering accompanies a deep groove and a shimmering sax solo as The Otherside hit you with a slow grind sex attack.

 4. Loosefingers – What is House (Alleviated records)

Laser-like 303 acid lines fire through a disjointed rhythm as some thoroughly evil vocal workings tell us who house was and where she came from. ‘What is House’ propels itself forward unrelentingly and is truly hypnotic. The track “is meant to be danced to” in a sweat drenched room in an unforgiving tower block in the dark heart of the city. ‘Dreaming of better days’ is the complete opposite, you’d expect to hear this in a red lit room, crushed velvet curtains stretching from ceiling to floor while impossibly beautiful women float from table to table, nurturing lost souls back to a blissful existence.

 5. House of Jezebel – Love & Happiness (Rush Hour)

Legowelt opts for a cover of soul classic ‘Love & Happiness’ and makes light work of it under his House of Jezebel moniker. The percussion rides on a hot and moaning bass line, while blues piano notes drop in from out of nowhere and disappear again beneath the hail of rattling snare drums and razor sharp hi hats. A yearning vocal sample perpetually invades your consciousness, the girl on the wrong side of the tracks, just looking for a chance to change.

 6. Mario Reyes ft Joe Nell – Lost Love (I Want You Back) (DJ International)

I’ll always throw in a couple of old ones, and when it comes to Chicago bass lines and lustful female vocals, ‘Lost Love’ will have you broken out in goosebumps before the end of the first bar. Sharp, organic, full-bodied and ablaze with the indescribable rhythmic qualities that soak a track in jack. If you haven’t heard this tune, find it, buy it and dance uncontrollably!

 7. House of Trax Vol.5 – (Rush Hour/Trax)

Another one of the Trax reissues, the A side of this record is Gwendolyn’s ‘Come To Me’.Vince Lawrence and Jessie Saunders create early electro beats made from modulating bass notes and FX ridden synths that glide through the groove. Gwendolyn gives an impeccable Blondie-esque performance in the verse which leads into a catchy and uplifting vocal hook that can’t fail please. The dubbed out version by Farley Jackmaster Funk remains near beatless throughout, giving a peculiar, unique and very interesting take on early house. Jessie Saunder’s Z-Factor has ‘Fantasy’ on the flip and the italo influence can clearly be heard. It’s synth-disco and it’s delightful but can’t touch the A side.

 8. D’Marc Cantu & The Maniacs – Future Electronix E.P (Nation)

Seriously intense and barren music here. ‘It’s my body’’s offkey acid lines and bare bones percussion combine with drilling intensity as relentless hats crash down on you with ferocious terror. The 303 continually stabs until you’re a bloody pool of broken veins gasping for breath on a darkly stained wooden floor. The other side ups the stakes with dark wave rave, an ever present snare drum marches this rhythm forward, tightly cocooned within a field of barbed light that sparks off each rapidly growing drum sound. Lunacy from deep space that brings you crashing from the cosmos at 500mph.

 9. Tyrez – Breath of Desire (Dolly)

The grooves on this record are so rammed full of that warm, beefy, analouge sound that has become synonymous with Tevo Howard that it should come with a label warning that excessive play will wear out your tone arm. With the title track, ‘Breath of Desire’, the bass is deep, raw and welcoming as it sits beneath a melancholy piano roll. Weeping pads surge up and down while crystal clear percussive sounds drive us through a wet night, broken and abused, as the amber lights flash above our head. This is by far my favourite track from the Chicagoan so far. ‘Technical Love’ is more of a nod to the dancefloor, but not without the intriguingly off key synth flashes – like a tesco till from another galaxy. More shining and shivering pads collide with that distinctly Tevo flavour for yet more guaranteed house music.

 10. Heartbreakers – What Do Boys Know About Love (Reality Records)

Another old one to close out this months charts from eclectic producer Pascal. An exemplary piece of early electro-disco, ‘What do boys know…’ combines classic hip-hop stabs and drum patterns with space age synth licks and a voice from one of New York’s high-rise disco crack dens. The music jams forward as she raps about let downs and put downs, warning her kind that boys don’t know nothing about love. Eletro funk in its earliest form.

Next up, Mother’s top 10 bangers of the moment…

  1. Kassem Mosse – Workshop 12 (Workshop)

Everytime this chap puts out a record it’s a buy-on-sight affair, and this is no different. His previous output for Workshop has been of the highest standard, and on this offering Mosse takes us into his own Elecronica-influenced House territory once again with 4 tracks ranging from acid-flecked grooves to Virgo as reworked by Autechre modes.

  2. John Roberts – Glass Eights (Dial)

This is as solid and realised as a house album gets, and definitely up there with the best LP’s released last year.

 3. Vinalog – Relative 03 (Relative)

Jacking stripped-back analogue house from the mysterious Relative camp. The thump of Chicago and the percussion of Detroit meet Johnny Cash sitting in a toilet reading The Doors biography while listening to The Geto Boys. Thats what the NME would say.

 4. Omar S – Here’s Your Trance Now Dance (FHXE)

He makes em, we buy em. Thats the way things work here on Planet Earth.

 5. Marcellus Pittman – M. Pittman EP (FXHE)

A classic cut from one of my favourite Detroit producers. This, in fine Detroit style, bends the rules in all the right points. Stop whatever record you had on and listen to ‘Nyrobi Knight’.

 6. Ramadanman & Appleblim – Void 23 (Carl Craig Remix) (Aus)

A percussive workout from these two hits the mark, but it’s definitely about the Carl Craig remix flipside on this one. In typical Carl Craig fashion he leaves additional production to a minimun, restructuring the track and adding extra synth work to flesh out and improve on what would’ve been otherwise just pretty good.

 7. Altered Natives – No Mortgage (Bosconi)

Danny Natives recent excursion into deep house territory is essential for those fans of Moodymann, Move D etc and is a testiment to his versatility as a producer.

 8. Appointment – Reel 2 Real (Appointment)

You’re 17 and at a club. You’ve dropped yer first ecto and you’ve just told the random bloke dancing next to you that you wanna have kids tomorrow and you want him to be their Godfather, and that you and him are gonna start a night too and maybe a label if yer maw lends you 300 quid which you’re pretty sure she will. Fast forward ten years. Your ecto dreams are in tatters and they dont make techno like they used to. That guy you were talking to is now doing time for sexual assault, and you cant have kids because Doc says ‘it’s no hapnin’. Your only consolance is finding out that they do actually still make techno like they used to.

 9. Moodymann – Freeki Mutha Fucker (KDJ)

What’s there to say about this track that hasn’t already been said? Nothing.

 10. Sandwell District – Feed Forward Test Sessions (Sandwell District)

More dynamic techno from the Regis, Function and Silent Servant collaborative effort that has undoubtedly went ways to introducing a whole new generation to that classic brummie sound.