Six tracks of Italian house here from duo System of Survival (Peter De Lisi and Alex Carpentieri) and the reason this EP caught my attention out of the several thousand I listened to today was that while none of the tunes do anything particularly clever or eventful, they are nice and fresh and they’re like the DJ equivalent of an adjustable wrench — they’d be really useful in a multitude of situations. In DJ terms, they’re tension builders, palette cleansers, and transition tracks, i.e.: they’re super-useful.

“Acid” is not acid, it’s a murky techno-tinged houser that opens up nicely when they drop the synth chords. “Freud” is a solid sci-fi house groove with sparklingly bright drums, little layers of percussion buried in the mix and spaceship synth programming.

Title track “One-o-one” is a speedy (131 bpm) one bar, four chord muffled key/synth progression locked in with some drums and a simple rumbling bass that’s vaguely redolent of mid-’90s Dutch house, while “Respect” has a similar vibe, coming in at 135 bpm and combining jazzy drum lines, horn samples and a nifty little organ riff.

Personal fave “Senor Q Base” starts off in a dreamy early ’90s Italian house style with a big warm pad wash, then it switches into a fat square wave bass groove and the juxtaposition between the comforting sonic blanket of the sustained synth pad and the irresistible stank-face groove of a raw square wave bass line when done well never fails: and it’s done well here and consequently doesn’t fail. Nice EP. 

⚪️ One-o-One Tracklisting

System Of Survival: One-o-One EP (Fventi / Digital)
1. Acid (5:06)
2. Freud (4:22)
3. One-o-One (5:58)
4. Respect (5:18)
5. Senor Q Base (6:32)
6. Woman (8:27)

⚪️ Disclosure Statement

This record was submitted as a promo.

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