Claude VonStroke - CaliFuture EP [DB112] 2014 WEB 320 [Tech House / Acid] TMGK

Less than a year since he served up his third album "Urban Animal," Claude VonStroke delivers more brand new original material! Based on the personal experience of starting at the bottom selling fake perfume out of the the trunk of his car, "CaliFuture" foretells the sunny-sided ironies experienced by the legions of fame and heat-seekers who head out to the Golden State each year in the pursuit of The Dream.

No matter how many knock-backs, no matter how many thankless interim occupations, no matter how many people yell at you each day; theres an overriding deep sense of hope that you WILL make it someday. The barbed Bootsy-style falsetto narrative comes from VonStroke's close friend Barry Drift - who you may recognise from Urban Animal's "Sugar & Cinnamon" - and his sermon is complemented by an obese acid groove that thunders unrelentingly beneath.

Fluctuating analogue funk, it taps into the deepest tech DNA with a lava-like flow. Instantly infectious (like all the best acid tracks) the groove carries so much weight weve included a dub version, too. On the flip, "Eye I Eye" is equally heavy and twice as twisted. A simple vocal shot is mangled, wrangled, and tangled in the way only Claude knows how.

Warped and wonderful, the vocal and processed percussion rise and excite with a strong sense of dirtybird insanity before plunging into juicy tech-funk groove. Mischievously jacking with a robust bass/kick play-off, more processed vocal shots enter the fray along with eerie risers that ghost up and down the scale with a fun sense of unpredictability.

A finer insight into the dark and devious mind of the dirtybird bossman you will not find. The question is: did his hard pre-fame Cali slog create this twisted mindset... Or was it already in place before he got there?