Tomcraft
Zounds of Arca
Great Stuff Recordings
It's time for something with a bit of a different flavour from Great Stuff boss Tomcraft. As if co-running several of the world's most prolific and successful house and techno imprints wasn't enough, he's also providing some of their hottest releases on an impressively regular basis.
Zounds Of Arca is a cool little groover, fixed around a sassy disco-fied breakbeat that harks back to the golden age of nu skool breaks 2 a sound threatening to make a renaissance at the moment. A futuristic, seductive arpeggiated bassline does the damage in the low end department, with rasping synths drafted in for texture and atmosphere. Banging big room house this is not, with our guide instead taking us in a darkly-tinged, highly-atmospheric, half-step direction.
If a 4/4 banger is exactly what you're after, however, help as at hand in the form of Phunk Investigation's wonderfully undulating re-rub. Taking that arpeggio bassline as their rhythmic jumping-off point, they build an energetic electro-tech vibe around it, and choose to make the most out of the original's scintillating elements. It's not a reinvention of the wheel, but instead sees the potential of the original through a different prism, with huge builds and hipshaking aplenty along the way.