DeepChord: Vantage Isle LP

Rod Modell & Stephen Hitchell’s landmark 2006 vessel docks its first 3 x 12” edition, replete with the first ever Convextion remix and graced by some of the finest dub techno beyond the M-Series/BC canon. At just-shy of 20 years old, and giving us acute nostalgia for hazier days, ‘Vantage Isle’ is renowned and enhanced with the benefit of hindsight for swirling countless sessions to a depth-charged payload of skanking, trotting, clagged-up dub house emblematic of the Berlin sound’s Detroit echo(space). It was the fateful first release on DeepChord’s own label, ushering tidal waves of moon-pulled grooves that have shored up on shelves everywhere, ready to be cracked out at those times when only the fuzziest stuff will suffice. To our (admittedly patchy) recollection its release coincided a period when mushies were, weirdly enough, legal in the UK and the madge was, well, majestic, and this record was a go-to soundtrack for properly smudged times. The first disc ideally oscillates signature strokes of durational, pounding dub house in ‘dc mix I’ and its multiple variations, reshapes, and dubs, notably the likes of their poignant dub noise miniatures such as ‘echo space glacial’ which pushed the BC aesthetic deeper into the brink of oblique, and came up for air in hypnogroggic style on the likes of the ‘spacecho dub II [extended mix]’. Even better, and practically worth price of admission alone, is the Convextion remix - Gerard Hanson’s first - masterfully distilling the elements to a ghostly choral swell swept up in pendulous triplets that eternally transport to the sublime. 100% classique.