Coming in with a cover that looks like something by a death metal band and beats that sound like a basement club staffed by werewolves, X Club‘s Now or NeverEP is a great EDM record that combines trance, house, and jungle.
“Concentrate” challenges you to do just that – focus on the beats and dance, dammit. You need to let go and cut loose now and then, and forget about all the crap happening in the world. The perfectly titled “Inna Trance” brings early rave tracks to mind and will get you bouncing.
“Sports That Require Petrol” not only has a fun title, but some of the coolest beats on the EP. It will make you want to stamp the pedal to the metal, or at least turn up the speed and incline on your treadmill. The EP ends with the “Journey Mix” of “Elevation” – a trippy track that drifts into euphoria by the end.
I’d like to catch these two Aussies at a festival or club. I’m sure they put on a great set, if this EP is any indication.
Keep your mind open.
[Elevate over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
Following its genesis release from the label co-founder himself, Galway native KETTAMA invites Brisbane locals and close pals X CLUB. to lay down the riddims for G-TOWN002.
Having met the lads at their GRID night in Brisbane during his Australian tour, G-TOWN Records label head KETTAMA alongside Shampain are familiar with the dutty duo. Shampain actually interviewed the pair for the VSN World website (a concept that started as a club night run by the label heads), so you could say this is a dream link up of sorts. They may be on the other side of the world but make no mistake, X CLUB. are honorary G-TOWN members.
Following releases on Steel City Dance Discs and 1Ø Pills Mate, alongside appearances on Mall Grab and Miley Serious’ Rinse FM shows, the duo of Ben Clarke & Jesse Morath have cemented their reputation as one of dance music’s most exciting doublets with their distinctively large productions – channeling influence from grime, electro, hardcore and techno – and capturing the minds and hearts of dance music fans with their big-room, uncompromising attitude. Punishingly beautiful, devastatingly cinematic; X CLUB.’s back catalogue invites a sea of oxymorons to the shore, blending euphoria and darkness – with one eye on the past and another to the future – to perfectly capture the mood of the modern-raver.
‘Concentrate’ kicks things off with a swirling blend of textured atmospherics and driving kicks that soon manipulates into a steppy electro-techno hybrid drenched in heads down energy. ‘Inna Trance’ swaps the serious for the fun with something that sounds like a blend of quintessential X CLUB. and the progressive, trance-like sounds of Radiant Love in Berlin; bouncy techno for those that like to smile while they dance.
‘Sports That Require Petrol’ incites images of joyriding youths doing donuts in parking lots and sweaty bodies bumping into one another in packed-out clubs; an ode to the hardcore era that contributed to the birth of the X CLUB. concept, before ‘Elevation (Journey Mix)’ guides us on a blissed-out trip through emo-dreamscapes and tears-in-the-club energy that wouldn’t sound out of place dropped in the middle of a Bicep performance.
