Artists: Steve Bug, youANDme, Black Soda
Title: I Hear You
Label: Rotary Cocktail
Cat: RC050
Format: Vinyl, digital
Release Date: September 25th 2020 (vinyl), October 5th 2020 (digital)
Tracklist:
A1. I Hear You (feat. Black Soda)
A2. I Hear You (Dub) (feat. Black Soda)
B1. Beyond AI
B2. Beyond AI (Dub)
Bandcamp Exclusive: I Hear You (Dub Instrumental)

Buy link: https://rotarycocktail.bandcamp.com/album/i-hear-you-feat-black-soda

Rotary Cocktail celebrates its 50th release with a beatiful trasparent splattered vinyl, where both the sides feature the music from youANDme and Steve Bug, who also introduced in their collaboration the great vocalist Black Soda.
The label was founded in 2004 and it’s managed by the Berliner youANDme, aside the numerous releases on vinyl the Rotary Cocktail team did their best to experimentate new ways to release a few EPs, we remember the only digital stuff like Deep’a & Biri’s ‘Grey’ and a bunch of albums like the one from Marko Furstenberg titled ‘Gesamtlaufzeit’, but let’s put aside the format thing, because the distinguishable thing from the label is the kind of sound proposed: fresh, catchy and mouth-watering, the Rotary Cocktail’s schedule is not so pressing so the fans have to wait month after month to get the next EP.
In addition, the styles available in each song variate from tech house, deep house and dub techno, each one carries influences that affected so many producers and djs, international and not, who contributed to enrich coherently and evenly the musical background of the label.
For what concerns this vinyl record, starting from the A side we can found ‘I Hear You’, that’s the title given to the EP and sees two versions of it. The impact coming from the Black Soda’s vocal is huge and creates the song motif, the synergy and communication between the instrumental and the voice is sinuous and harmonious. For sure the long time collaboration between Martin (youANDme) and Black Soda established a particular relationship, which let their approaches to music to match in a unique direction, their styles mix each others very well with of course the mr. Bug’s one.
On the flip ‘Beyond Al’ is available with two mixes too (the original and the dub), in this one the Poker Flat Recordings approach to music and its influences are stronger than the title track, this kind of deep house marks the Steve Bug’s style where a phat kickdrum is inserted into a basic drum loop, with large synth chords and sexy pads, anyway the synth part represents a cohesive unit; in the overall EP the synth parts seem to share a unique vision.
For the only digital lovers you can also get the instrumental mix of ‘I Hear You’.
Hopefully an imprint like Rotary Cocktail will continue to fight the changes of times and the evolution of electronic music, staying in-line with its nature and essence, proposing unique and great EPs, without hurrying up with releases filled with bad and hasty produced tracks.

More info:
https://soundcloud.com/stevebug
https://soundcloud.com/youandme-martin
https://soundcloud.com/rotary-cocktail-rec
https://rotarycocktail.bandcamp.com/

Review by Matteo Pitton