We present the first in a series of re-issues with >A Deeper Ground EP< by Repeat Orchestra, originally released in 2000. Needless to say, it sounds no less fresh ten years later. The four-track EP is the work of Stefan Schwander under the Repeat Orchestra name. In his Repeat Orchestra work, Schwander distills the finest elements of Detroit techno and Chicago house into a sleek hybrid that honours its roots while casting its gaze upon the future.
The opening title cut rolls out half-a-minute of hyperactive percussive clatter and insistent bass pulsations before the groove proper swings into view, and what a luscious house groove it is. Here and in the other tracks, syncopated chords and string motifs pepper crisp soulful house grooves. Not a sound is out of place and there’s not a moment of excess in Schwander’s stripped-down constructions.
“Virus” digs into its snappy house strut before a looped piano element enters the fray and the thumping groove broadens out, plunging deeper and getting funkier in the process as chords ricochet across the piano motif. In “Busy Signal,” a slinky hi-hat pattern and claps lay the foundation for a polyphonic criss-cross of piano and synth patterns that in under four minutes deftly synthesizes Detroit-styled futurism and classicism. A deeper ground indeed!