In the days of credit crunch and Bosman dealings it can be hard for new talent to make a breakthrough but Soma are doing their bit with the Somabeta offshoot being billed as the academy for developing talent. Slipping an album release out in January is always a good time to gather attention and push people further into the consciousness than may have been achieved in a busier month but it’s also a good time to launch something new and fresh.
The Somabeta release is an unashamed techno release that sets its agenda from the first track, ‘Easy’ by Audofililia, a South American duo. It’s definitely a cutting edge record in the fact that its new and emerging talent providing the songs but the styles and passages of music will be fairly familiar to anyone who has raised more than an ear to electronic music and indeed the Soma label in the past decade.
Anyone looking for a new local hero would be advised to check out ‘Restoration’ by Gary Beck, a Glasgow based producer who appears to be burning the candle at both ends with the amount of work he is undertaking at the moment but if it’s all of this quality, then you can only encourage him to work on.
Sometimes compilation dance records can suffer due to a lack of cohesion but the over-riding unity and sense of freshness keeps this collection of tunes bubbling along nicely and if you want to get a sneak peek at what lies in store for the rest of 2009, you could do worse than give this a spin.