- Morocco's top label connects with Detroit on this slamming electro EP.
- The choice of Detroit's Filthiest for the first release on Trans World Railways, a new release series from the Moroccan label Casa Voyager, makes plenty of sense. The series stems from an idea that Driss Bennis, one of Casa Voyager's founders, explained in a recent label of the month feature. Casa Voyager, he said, should release non-Moroccan artists in pursuit of a cultural exchange, breaking what he described as a "cultural colonialism dynamic." Among the handful of strong releases that Casa Voyager has put out so far, Detroit electro has been a major source of inspiration. It's a sound that the Iraq-born, Detroit-raised Julian Shamou has been exploring under the names DJ Nasty, 313 Bass Mechanics, Digitek and, more recently, Detroit's Filthiest, since the mid-'90s.
Private Stock has some overlap with Casa Voyager's catalogue (if you're familiar with the label, you might be reminded of Kosh's "Null 212"), but it tends to stride towards its influences where other producers on the label have held something in reserve. You can sense the role that Shamou played in developing the ghettotech sound in the overt influence of hip-hop and funk on these tracks. "Deuce & A Quarter" has one of those fat, funky basslines that appear so regularly in the style, while its glistening chords and strings are reminiscent of '90s hip-hop. A similar mood runs through "The Chase Scene" and "Dolemite," tracks that draw from '70s funk to create a timeless sense of good times. It's only "Trauma" that's anything less than pure sunshine. It reps the darker, Drexciyan school of Detroit electro through a couple of aqueous synth lines and a powerful broken beat. Private Stock shows that Casa Voyager should be able to expand outside of its tight circle of artists without losing what's made it so essential.
TracklistA1 Dolemite
A2 Trauma
B1 Deuce & A Quarter
B2 The Chase Scene