hugg & pepp - meral

with my recollection i bought the "naken janne" ep in '05 and i already knew of "janne", which more or less is the titletrack, as this was a track played everywhere at the time. it was definitely around the time people outside of the techno & house scene started looking at jesper dahlbäcks productions because of the rework of "murder of the bass". i bring that up as "janne" has an vicious bassline and part of it's charm is that it sounds like the cross between a hoover and a reese at times.

as i actually listened to the other tracks on the record, i was sort of into them but nothing hit as hard as "janne" at the time. not going to lie but at time i was still coming to the notion that techno didn't just mean drumcode type records. i liked some other techno but i was favouring the fast and pounding sound. "janne" fit sort of into that when pitched up but i also learned that i had to play this music differently.

there was one track that sort of grabbed my mind at the time and remember it vividly hearing "meral" and being a bit into as i started getting back into those persuader records. i know that hugg & pepp is in collaboration with his cousin john but anything that jesper dahlbäck does, that sounds remotely like his persuader records will probably get support from me. even if it's almost 10 years after it's release but i do know why i didn't play it back then. my toes had just been dipped into playing deeper house and even then my notion of deep house was the really atmospheric kind.

none the less i want to still talk about this one and it is the bassline and the pads that makes "meral" the brilliant tune that it is. the dahlbäcks build up a steady groove with a distinct closing hihat with each clap and some funky congas. the bass comes teasing in after a little while and it squelches a bit to an extent that sounds like farts but it works with the track. the warm pads used in a few of dahlbäck's previous productions come in for a little time when they are later replaced with a more perky patch.

further on in the track the bass also gets to shine with a solomoment of sorts and along with it there are some beat edits. while all of this is happening there is a moody but sombre pad in the background and while it's just playing longer chords it really does it's job with the ambience. great track and for that extent great ep in general, there isn't a bad track on this release and i can fit all of the songs in a set any day.

it helps sometimes to look in your recordcollection and see if you have forgotten some gems, this was definitely one of those.



also the nerdy/popcultural part of me has to point out that all of the tracks which are "janne", "meral", "robban", "linda" are named after people who took part of various reality shows in the early noughties. all of them gained notoriety in one way or another and janne for instance was kalled "naken janne" ("naked janne") for his nudist ways.