Saturday Spotlight: Phaeny

Welcome to our new weekly feature, Saturday Spotlight, in which we take a closer look at an artist or label we feel deserving of some extra attention.

First up is an artist that, for a shamefully long time, had gone unnoticed by myself, until recently. Cast your mind back to last month, and you may recall my glowing praise of the latest release from Hungarian resident Phaeny (you can read the review right here) on the consistently quality Celsius Recordings.

The fact is, such glowing praise could just as easily be poured lavishly upon any one of his handful of releases over the last year. There’s Can’t Keep On, released via the criminally underrated Touch Tone, that serves as a valid reminder that not all drum and bass tracks with female vocals need sound like an attempt to crack the top ten. It’s flip, I’ll Be, is an equally sultry number.

There’s a pair of fantastic EPs, both with year based titles. The first of these, the 1995 EP on Modular Grid, features three solid pieces of work, with both the eponymous track and Mumbai Funk sounding like modern takes on the insane, amen laced mayhem found in the jungle sounds of the mid 90s. The second, 1996 on Liquid Brilliants, once again stuns with three incredible tracks fusing tight porduction and great musicality.

A single on Atmomatix at the beginning of the year and a scattering of tunes on compilations from Funkstuff Recordings rounds off what has been an amazing year of releases from Phaeny. Keep an eye out for his new EP dropping soon on Influenza Media, and add him to your list of buy on sight artists immediately.