The Summer has officially arrived. The skies are clearing. The grey is turning to blue and the sun is finally making itself known. But darkness is always near when it comes to electronic music. Lux Rec. have an obsession with House. Their fixation with the 707, 808, 909 and 303 has led to the latest 12”. Jack Curtu is a new name to the scene, or more like an established artist pseudonym arriving with Senza Via d’Uscita.
“Paranoia” gets the show on the road. The track is a reverberating piece of oil smeared Jak. There’s something of Legowelt’s “What Time is It” in the rumbling synth-lines and smudged beats—a powerful piece to open. It might be the symmetry of the two names but there’s a definite touch of D’Marc Cantu to this Jack Curtu material. Or, perhaps it’s blatantly obvious. But we’re not here to establish a suspect, only to investigate his movements. “Complotto” is a peculiar reduction. Glitched up and drone drowned: hi-hats bulge against a backdrop of interference and aggression. A work of Nation and Traxx inspired Horror House. If “Complotto” introduces the knife it is “Dramma” that plunges it into the hero’s chest. The finale is a track of sinister acid squalor. 303 lines are tweaked and contorted into metallic mutations with machine beats attacking on multiple fronts. Deviant Jak.
If Meschi and Echo 106 were a melodic departure for Lux, Jack Curtu is a return to the terror. The sound is an extension, and amplification, of Lux’s Definition of Jak. The record fights alongside the noises of the Crème Jak series, the frankenhouse of James T Cotton or the self destruction of Melvin Oliphant III. If you like your House dark, depraved and masochistic: look no further, you’ve found it.
Senza Via d’Uscita is available on Lux Rec.
