Franck Roger: Let’s Go Down (Real Tone Records)

Real Tone is one of the single most important labels on the scene today. Consciously bridging Deep House with some of the more eclectic and talented purveyors of Techno, every single release has built upon the progress of the last, from Maya Jane Coles’ “What They Say” (which probably more than anything else nudged her on the way to popular acclaim) to Shonky’s Le Velour EP, and now to this one from Franck Roger himself. When I read people worrying about Deep House’s aging audience, I have to point them to the advances made by Real Tone and labels like it: there is a real, live underground out there and you might wish they did more edits of thirty year old disco tracks or wrote more melodic songs, but a younger, underground crowd exists. It’s a fact. It’s largely due to the new generation of producer/DJs with bedroom rigs and huge ass record collections and labels like Real Tone that have spotted them early, got them in the right groove and put ’em on their way.

On the previous two releases, the rougher originals were smoothed over a bit and given a bit of a grooveful makeover by Roger himself, but this release is his own. It’s virtually a blueprint for a sound I’ve come to love but have had trouble finding in any abundance. The percussion and vocal chant (filtered and processed so it sounds like it’s coming from a pair of tinny speakers) are almost tribal but with a metallic edge – it’s the sort of thing that William Burroughs had in mind when he coined the term “metallic cocaine bebop”, or at least I’d like to think so. Whether this is a manner of humanizing Techno or further mechanizing House is up to you, and it hardly matters if you’re looking for something that can move the underground masses. This is it.

Sascha heats it up with a blowtorch with his Dive Down Underground Remix. It’s a flip between the two.