Richie Blacker – Voices In The Echo EP (Of Unsound Mind)

I’ve only recently tuned into Richie Blacker and I have to say I have a bit of a producer crush. His recent ‘Mess Express’ on Sasha’s Last Night On Earth was like hyper-spacing back to ’91 on the wings of a dove and now his latest EP on Skream’s Of Unsound Mind is three tracks of glorious chunkiness offered in different flavours from deep and melodic house through to acid house.

‘Voices In The Echo’ is a lush, deep house number showcasing a classic 909 drumset, haunting vocals, chiming pianos and bags of melody from the start. How Richie fits in so much without it sounding muddy or crowded I don’t know, but ‘Voices In The Echo’ is certainly a peak-time roof raiser. You can be sure there are flavours of nostalgia, here but this isn’t a retro track, let’s call it post-modern.

‘Solar jellyfish’ is a burbling, faux acid, Detroit-esque house cut. There is deep melodic bass, soaring pads and old-school synth lines, and clever acid riffs.

However the stand-out track on the EP is ‘Charlie E’, a contemporary acid house banger with a huge rubber bassline that just hopped off an airliner from Chicago and an earth shaking bottom end that is, let me be clear, an absolute roof raiser.

There are vocal snippets “acid” and “bass” and others too that sound like it’s all been machine programmed in the MPC (but probably hasn’t). About half way through enter synths, pads and goodness knows what, man this is a journey.

‘Charlie E’ is absolutely packed with all sorts of goodness, it’s one of those tracks that leaves you wondering what the heck it was and hoping one day you’ll find out. It sounds classic, quite timeless but with that Richie Blacker stamp.

I don’t know what it is he’s got, but it’s something and it’s something special. Keep your ear glued to the ground for Richie Blacker, I think he has a bright future indeed.

A fantastic quality EP from Richie. The only thing wrong with it is the order of the tracks.

Score: 8.5/10

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