- German producer Reboot has been a mainstay in boxes, wallets and hard drives of discerning selectors for a while now, and rightly so. His long, languid techno cuts are built for epic mixing and his production smarts evoke the percussive swagger of Luciano and the off-kilter melodies of Villalobos without sounding exactly like either. Surrounded by like-minded souls such as Johnny D and Sascha Dive, Reboot has seen his sound adapt well to '08s deep house flourish, although you can't help but fear that his delicate and uniquely skewed sonic vision may have been enveloped slightly in the two-chord, drum driven madness of the year that was.
His last release on Below was the double barrel dance floor shot of "Charlotte" and "Clear Motion," which seduced and combusted in equal measures, and this new effort on the label continues the Boot's solid output. It doesn't hit the eerie grandeur of "Charlotte," but instead sticks to a groove-laden agenda that's well within Reboot's comfort zone.
Lead track "Doctor Nunez" sounds like "Charlotte '08." A wheezing bassline underpins shuffling monotony built with rolling toms and cascading claves. The tension, a trademark of the Reboot sound, builds brilliantly to a breakdown of spooky echoes nattering in a dark cave of droning organs and dark reverb, but the payoff at the peak isn't as devastating as "Charlotte"—the groove here meekly kicks back in, leaving you feeling a little stood up.
"Vandong" fares much better. It's a sweaty, sleazy tech houser that's fun and funky; all skeletal handclaps and bone dry percussion that shimmies along to an off-kilter acid riff. It's a great example of what Reboot can do when he hangs his serious hat on the hook and definitely a direction that suits the guy. (See also: Reboot's excellent remix of Alex Flatnell's "Perfect Circles")
Even so, Reboot's distinctive take on percussion and his intuitive ability to use tension as a brushstroke will always elevate his standard releases from being pedestrian, but this certainly isn't essential and nowhere near the heights of "Charlotte."
Tracklist A Nunez
B Vandong