There's currently no shortage of vinyl-only labels supplying retro tinged music. Yet somehow Retreat's vintage sounding efforts always manage to stand out. Session Victim's "Good Intentions" is a case in point. A twinkling Rhodes line—that could have been lifted off any Crusaders record circa '79—spins around a workmanlike bass and beat combo. Stabs of synth are chopped in and out while high-end frequencies ebb and flow to ramp up the tension. Make no mistake, this is the exact filter house formula Sneak and Cricco Castelli were peddling in the '90s—just with the pitch control set to minus 6—yet Session Victim's classy production values and skill with an obscure sample give "Good Intentions" an ageless quality.
Quarion's effort to the package will be familiar to anyone who picked up a record on the Slowhouse label a few years ago. Skippy snares drive a swirling synth heavy production. The result is a track that sounds like a lost Masters At Work bonus beat; albeit with India's wailing vocals swapped out for burbling keyboards and pitched down samples. Iron Curtis' "Mysteries of Time" is probably both the most modern sounding cut on the EP and also the weakest. Not that the melodic twists and turns of the record are in any way bad. It's simply that the sustained chords and wobbly bass give this record a slightly generic feel compared to the aforementioned delights of Quarion and Session Victim.
Buy Various Artists - Treats Vol. 3 at
Tracklist: Various Artists - Treats Vol. 3
 A1 Iron Curtis - You, On a Friday Night
A2 Quarion - Mysteries Of Time
B Session Victim - Good Intentions
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