Better late than never. Tracks being delivered right at the last minute meant the release date was pushed forward slightly. The album contains nine new tracks from artists on the Virus B-23 roster and it was decided that reselling tracks from the back catalogue would be a lazy and expected move for a first year compilation so the artists who appear were asked to supply new unreleased material to wet your appetite for their forthcoming material in 2007. There’s a glimmer of hope that there’ll be something for everyone on Phlegmatic Selections but that’s probably hoping for the impossible. However what is on offer is a selection of dancefloor, front room floor, dubstep and electronica.
The edit and effects laden electrohouse behemoth from Neoteric offers no less than eight minutes of the kind of material that can be dropped on most dancefloors, Dissonance has an acidy punch and plenty of layered blips, bleeps and squeaks that emerge from the infectious groove making it the stuff of many a DJ’s sure fire arsenal. Speaking of Neoteric there’s also a remix of his Bicycle Day track turned in by new Virus B-23 signing. Nick Chambers aka Future For The Good makes wonderfully engaging electronica and here has delivered a remix that still bears enough of the original for the sake of familiarity but adds a leftfield electronic edge to it that makes it less likely to be a main room track and more of a backroom tickler. Subversif Tones is a schizoid, shapeshifting mutation that escaped from the home studio used by sonic scientist The Rumblist. It starts off all floaty then builds into cussing voices, skittering clicks and time stretches, moves into chopped breaks, synths and atmospherics and then drops into sliced up drum carnage. The trick The Rumblist seems to have in the bag is combining musicianship with head bending electronic trickery and Subversif Tones is no exception, it’s pretty special material.
There are two dubstep offerings. Since the release of Psychederelict Dubs Vol 1 by Markomen he has been bombarded with offers from other labels and has been on remix duty for several tracks including Soundbox – Red Stripe Chaser. For the compilation he’s created another bass laden wobbler similar to the psychederelict style complete with a sample of Lee Scratch Perry chatting on Channel U about being an “obeah man” (which is the title of the track). Virus B-23’s other dubstep producer Soundbox has been on a roll with his music coming out of his studio in Bristol. From a pile of many new tracks Tub Girl came out as the choice for this release, others will appear on a single in 2007 along with the remix of Red Stripe Chaser. Switching styles completely and into the world of Lisbon duo Photonz and their distinct techno and house crossover sound that has been picked up by Dubkult’s Living Records as well as Virus B-23. The track featured is Kicked Out and merges old school analogue techniques with software assisted tweaks to create something that is quite minimal but bursting with character and wonkiness. Markur, one half of Photonz, spoke recently about the live feel to their music and making this track - "It was done in one take. I love doing live improvising over some programmings, it's so liberating ... just with patterns and assigned some parameters to our controllers and just having fucking fun."
The deviants from Leeds known as Soundex seem to have added a touch of their other project Speculum to the new track called Growler. It’s a sort of a progressive number with loads of tweaks and glitches and comes in phases starting off fairly sparse then dropping into a techy bassline and growing into guitar led beats for the final section. It’s hard to say which genre this track would be at home in so let’s just say it’s Technical Filth which is the category Vince and Loz Soundex have created for their music. Wonderkid producer Aerotake has been busy with his studies at school this year but has managed to create the majority of his debut album in his spare time. Elysian Fields is a string filled downtempo piece that hints at the widescreen nature of the forthcoming album and is built from orchestral elements and trip hop style drums. Label partner Deadman DJ drops a surprise track in advance of his The Robots Are Coming EP. It’s a rare thing to hear finished material from Deadman DJ though he has dozens of almost finished tracks locked up in his laboratory, for Phlegmatic Selections we get a taste of his love for slower tempo tracks and Meera is a convulsing, wailing bastard of a track that bears some fairly wrong sounding noises and loose hip hop drums staggering about. So there it is, a Virus B-23 compilation, go buy it.
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