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SEE YOU WHEN YOU GET THERE (Delusions of Grandeur)

10.11.14

Crack Magazine receive hundreds of press releases a day. Many of these trumpet the ‘authenticity’ of their client. In this way, authenticity is something so widely touted it’s become a kind of fetish for PR professionals; brandished like a good luck charm, warding off (evil) critical spirits. Fact is, all producers are now so apparently authentic that the whole idea of ‘authenticity’ is now just another bait-and-switch in the syrupy hyperbole of press releases.

More interesting and enjoyable is the rare act that’s genuinely, uninhibitedly enthusiastic about their art. Affable marijuana enthusiasts Hauke Freer and Matthias Reiling have been producing classy, disco-flecked deep house as Session Victim for a few years now, finding homes on Retreat and Delusions of Grandeur. Their music –not inaccurately; maybe unfairly – has been shoved in a box marked ‘somewhere between The Revenge and Motor City Drum Ensemble’.

They’ve already put out an album, 2012’s Haunted House of House, for which the duo earned widespread acclaim. See You When You Get There could have been more of the same – their debut was popular and effective – but their sophomore represents a genuine (dare I say authentic?) evolution and progression in their sound. While a lot of this has to do with the rough edges that get ironed out during the move from bedroom to professional studio (the boys were allowed use of Studio G in San Francisco), the general feeling is more accomplishment than polishing; substantive vs surface quality improvement.

In short, Haunted House was good, See You is better. Opener Do It Now bounces with the fun, enthusiastic vibe of previous material, but with more swagger and even some Terje-synth; the title track is also outstanding, drawing on a range of samples and sounds from EBM to hip-hop, building and decaying over a series of peaks and troughs like a spaced out Aim; Club track Never Forget is built around the kind of rolling piano sample producers dream of stumbling on; et cetera. I could pose a cool detachment to all this brilliance – that unimpressedness still popular in critical circles – but I have my authenticity to think about.