BALUT017: Three Parts Remix EP
Following the release of the Polar Pair album late last year, here’s a quality pack of remixes for six tracks, divided to three parts.
Part 1 is the more straightforward club package, containing remixes by two of Tel-Aviv’s most promising duos. The first remix is delivered by Red Axes, the new hot shots now signed to the French stable I’m a Cliche. The duo gravitated towards the punky-funky Indifferent, and added their signature sounding rugged disco assault. Deep’a and Biri, with a new album to be released on Gigolo Records and a cut on Derrick May’s recent We Love Detroit Compilation, took the sublime disco anthem Star, and transformed it into a Berghain techno stormer.
Part 2 takes the tempo down a notch and a couple of miles high into the stratosphere. Generation Bass’ maestro, SaBBo, treats Not Real with a heavy stomping beat, which sounds new as much as it brings to mind classic Leftfield tracks.
The second remix here is by Botanika’s Bunny on Acid, now adopting a new moniker, Grá, that matches his deep and intricate sound, with a new album coming soon on Studio Rockers. He’s take on album opener, Let’s Go, is a dubby trip through reverberating spaces and a disjointed 808 beat that holds it all together.
Part 3, as its name – Self-Mutilation – suggests, has a couple of remixes done by Polar Pair themselves. Picked from the remix series they released every other week via their soundcloud page, it contains a deep and slow house workout for the soulful Hope You Know, and a new wave pastiche meets techno on the Fantasy Love remix.
All 3 covers designed by Afik Naim
BALUTLP001: Polar Pair (Album)
Polar Pair, aka Malkiel Grossman & Nadav Ravid, have been making music together for almost twenty years. It took the world about the same time to catch up with their vision.
It’s impossible to box Polar Pair’s music into one neat definition; The gamut is simply too wide. The music oscillates from throbbing dance-floor tracks to R’n'B ballads, primal post-punk to cutting-edge bass music, hip-hop to disco, catchy pop to experimental beats. These influences can sometimes be easily spotted and sometimes they’re blended together, as if that was their purpose all along.
Malkiel and Nadav have been meeting religiously at their Polar Pair studios for years, banging heads and letting off pent up, notoriously muggy Tel-Aviv steam, churning out banger after banger. Some of these were released hot-off- the-press, straight to their tumblr, while the rest – the gems, the jewels, the Ferran Adriàs of bangers – culminated in this album. Born with the original working title “Every Song is Different”, the album relishes in living up to this: it swings between entire genres, colours, gender-roles and moods, varying deliciously in tone and atmosphere; It nails pastiches to the past and takes bold stabs at defining the future, layering familiar, comforting voices with bright, unheard ones.
These may all seem like symptoms of bi-polar disorder, but they are the unlikely ingredients that make up the new Polar Pair album.
Released October 1st, 2012
Booklet designed by Tubi
Cover designed by Heela Harel || helloheela.tumblr.com
Cover image by Germanex || germanex.deviantart.com
BALUT015: Polar Pair – Cry x3 (ft Eyal Glass)
Release Date: September 3rd, 2012
With a new album just around the corner and a heap of praise for their latest “Hip Shakin Mama” vinyl EP, including XLR8R & Feel My Bicep, here’s ”Cryx3”, the proper 1st single from Polar Pair’s upcoming, self-titled full-length.
The original track, which started as a R&B pastiche, evolved into a future soul gem, with rippling sub aquatic bass, splintered beats and the soulful crooning of Eyal Glass (Deep Sea Creatures). The remix pack includes a footwork-come-drum’n’bass interpretation from the rising star of the UK bass scene, Deft, and a vocoder-heavy remix from LA’s controllerism maestro, Side Brain, who infects the track with a completely new melody and a sun drenched boogie vibe.
Cover designed by Heela Harel
BALUT013: Polar Pair – Hip Shakin’ Mama (April 2012)
Hip Shakin Mama EP is a 300-copy, strictly vinyl release, which precedes the forthcoming Polar Pair album. The common thread of the EP is an old-school-meets-new-school approach. All the tracks draw their inspiration from classic moments in dance music’s history, while applying an up-to-date sound and production.
The A side is Hip Shakin Mama – essentially a jacking house tune, with deep pulsating bass, sprinkles of post-punk guitars, and a soulful, cheekily treated vocal sample.
The B side features two remixes of tracks from the forthcoming album, from highly respectful producers: garage hero Zed Bias contributes a vintage 2 Step dub monster, while Amsterdam’s purveyors of the deep Juju&Jordash came up with a tremendous proto-house/new beat hybrid.
Free, exclusive tracks from Polar Pair
Polar Pair are giving out free tracks every other Tuesday, on their newly launched tumblr. The tracks are either remixes of tracks from their forthcoming album, or stuff that didn’t fit in the album.
So far, three tracks have been released. Check them out right here.
The first track is Be Gone, ft. Eyal Glass on vocals. The remix is a slow house number, with a sub bass holding it together:
The second is Sing it Once (Minneapolis Version) – a sort of a house meets breakbeat on a sea-sick poisonous bass boat:
And the last one so far is more of a straight up classic house number:
