Soul 223 - Eastern Promise EP (Boe Recordings)


Suffice to say Ben Parkinson from the magical land of Boe is a uniquely talented chap. Seems like his good use of 6 month-long jaunts to India to rekindle his fire for running one of the most stealthy and well-respected but still under-the-radar imprints in house music have paid off; as he seems to move from strength to strength and perhaps more importantly refuses to be pigeon-holed. Since 2007 he's put out close to 20 excellent records, pretty much all of which would do quite well in the bags of top detroit and chicago jocks. Ten releases ago we covered his Deymare ep (BOE09) on these pages and now we come back to celebrate BOE19, a fantastic piece of plastic by Soul 223. 

Without further ado, let's cut straight to the man behind the music. Soul 223 aka Steve Pickton ain't no greenhorn when it comes to studio skills having built a solid stream of releases under other monikers - perhaps the most prolific of which perhaps being 'Stasis'. Under this guise he's released a handful of proper lovely ambient house and techno productions most notably on legendary electronic label Peacefrog almost 20 years ago (sorry for the age giveaway steve!). More recently he's put out a killer Soul 223 record called the All City Ep (look it up, big hint!). It's been in our bag for a while now, lovely beatdown deepness, check the link below. And more recently his 12" on Delsin garnered much attention and was dropped by some of the current respectable Joes in the game, Session Victim, Gerd and Cottam to name a few.

 

The Eastern Promise Ep is a great record in our humble opinion that doesn't follow the same path as the million other deephouse records released these days (i.e doesn't bore us to tears). the A1 Age of Peace, is one of the more uptempo numbers here that hits with a lovely trademark deephouse rhodes riff and bassline that follow suit, but keeps it punchy and danceable with strong drums and shuffly high end. Next up, and perhaps more on the morning tip, Wide Open Spaces is a stomping groover with subbass on each kick that will shake your soul. Keep it well locked to the end of the track when you're subjected to a complete change in direction as it breaks into a fat as hip-hop beat to wind things down. Can only imagine the damage the low end from this tune would do on a rig. Pick of the bunch goes to In Motion - (a wax exclusive, the others are available digitally) a no-fuss dancefloor filling house beast. An easy as pie two-note synthline creates massive tension with an uptempo groove and chuggy drums; the icing on the cake being excellent vocal hooting and hollering samples that if heard in ze club you'd be pulled and locked into the groove. Really a tight track here, we'll surely be playing this one out any chance we get. 

There's two more cuts on the vinyl release that are also large and in charge, check em out:
 

Wax is out in a couple of weeks - and as always with BOE: be sure to buy directly from his Discogs warehouse via his Discogs page HERE.

OR better yet, use this fantastic Bandcamp website and you'll get a free download of the ep with the purchase of the wax. Win/win.



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