On Gatekeeper's new single: GATEKEEPER: "LET GO"/ WEDGE: "OVERFIEND"

Love the jittery pizzicato strings and the fuzzy bass undertow on this; the lushly glacial stringsynths, and the way the tune flips effortlessly back n forth from Feminine to Masculine Pressure: it's built from elements that you'd think wouldn't work together, but, like a jigsaw puzzle or crazy paving, it turns into something you didn't quite expect. Am I miles out in thinking it's got a slightly Old School Jonny L feel to it - "Piper", "Up All Night" - but filtered through 2-Step and Dubstep....?

Either way, another complete winner for the mighty Punch Drunk label, I think. Tom says this should drop sometime in Aug.

Still Gatekeeper is def. the man to watch right now - his mix of Wedge's "Overfiend" is frankly astonishing. It's a five-minute, cinematic-sounding tour de force...spooky as fuck without resorting to needless morbity or gnarly sawbass wobble. (There's a soundclip on his MySpace if you wanna go check) About three minutes in, the track rises from the dead in swirly plumes of dry-ice, and wanders off in search of food...it's pant-wettingly fabulous stuff: there's a strange sound like jets going over at one point, synths that sound like whimpering dogs, etc...if this doesn't get used on the soundtrack of the remake of John Carpenter's "The Thing", then I wanna know why. Wedge's original is pretttty damn good too, with its clicking castenet percussives, ratchety drums, knife-sharp synthswirls and plumes of frozen breath...but I think Gate's mix just pips him in the eerie stakes...

This drops pretty soon on new Bristol label Reduction which is run by DJ ThinKing, who says:

"Yep I'm kicking off my new label, Reduction Records, with a Wedge/Gatekeeper plate, just got the TPs in and will hopefully have the finished product out within the next 6 weeks.

"With respect to future releases and so on, I can confirm that the 2nd release will be from Elemental, but from there it gets a little hazy - I am also in the throes of setting up a second label, so am just sorting out which artists to put on which label. I can say with a degree of confidence that over the next 6mths or so we'll be releasing music from 23hz & Numaestro, TRG, Slaughter Mob, Cyrus, Toasty, and hopefully some newer names too.

"Reduction Records will focus on the more musical side of things, i.e. aiming to release more complete pieces of music, as opposed to a bunch of loops repeated for 6 mins. The newer label (as yet unnamed) will possibly be an outlet for the more conventional 'club bangers' - all I can say for now is watch this space..."