- As a dance producer, hiding your identity can accomplish various goals. If you ship your record in blank packaging and pick some inscrutable artist name, you force people to assess the music more or less on its own merit. Then you have cases like Hard Beach Entertainment, a label run by French artists DJ Trebluf & DJ Beusta. Keeping their personal details obscured gives them a blank canvas, which they fill with pixelated art and signifiers from the heyday of '90s American ghetto house. DJ Trebluf is an anagram for Rawthenticity boss Fulbert (real name Timothée Victorri, now a Seoul resident), and DJ Beusta generally releases tunes as Bastien Carrara. As Trebluf and Buesta, they put out raw, sample-laden records in the tradition of the raw Midwestern sound they love, as well as release music by their forbears, like Detroit veteran Gari Romalis (as DJ SCSI).
Victorri and Carrera also make some badass tunes. Though their music has appeared on labels like Local Talk and Apron, Hard Beach feels like a suitable place to push their productions further into the red. HBE004 begins with Victorri's "Piano Track," a house steamroller along the lines of Roy Davis Jr.'s "Who Dares To Believe In Me." These guys tend to play fast and loose with their samples, but "Piano Track" points to a history of appropriation that runs through the duo's influences, sampling The Hypnotist's 1991 track "The House is Mine," which itself borrows from Richie Haven's "Going Back To My Roots." But what's most impressive on "Piano Track"—as well as on Victorri's menacing, Robert Armani-esque "Strikin In The Hood"—is the drum programming. That nimble, ascending tom pattern will stand out amidst hours of 4/4 kicks.
On the B-side, Carrera pays tribute to the various sides of Dance Mania, beginning with a slamming disco edit that could be a dusty DJ Deeon flip. The seething yet funky "Ghetto Life 744" hammers home what this pair is trying to do: make raw dance music in the image of their heroes.
TracklistA1 DJ Trebluf - Piano Track
A2 DJ Trebluf - Strikin In The Hood
B1 DJ Beusta - Untitled 01
B2 DJ Beusta - Ghetto Life 744