Wonderful words by the ever erudite Adam Turner.

HeavyHandz is Roger Dickes, an LA-based producer. His latest track, Cages, is out now on Dennis Kane’s New York label, LESDK. The original mix is an eight minute dancefloor missile, with one well-shod foot in the Nu Disco arena, boasting walls of synths, snares, the mechanical hiss of hi-hats, and rippling arpeggios. The E.P. also comes with remixes from Dennis, Richard Sen and Belgian Balearic heroes, Rheinzand.

Dennis’ Outland Remix snakes its way in and then hits hard with strong synths and keys and a metronomic kick. A key change flips things slightly, for those who like a little melancholy with their hedonism. He splices the `80s stadium- indie chords of Depeche Mode and New Order with some Giorgio Moroder. With huge cymbal splashes, ghostly choral voices, and repeating synth patterns, the music summoning strobes and blinding white lights.

Richard Sen, fresh from his solo album India Man, actually serves up two terrific transformations. The first digs into the sounds Richard collected on last year’s award-winning compilation, Dream The Dream: UK Techno, House and Breakbeat 1990-1994. Tapping into London in 1990, and the wider techno sounds coming from Amsterdam, Brussels, West Berlin… massive ambient chords, juddering synths, breakdowns, re-entries, long hair, faded 501s, MA1 jackets, long sleeved tees… it’s nine minutes of ecstatic, multi-layered, rich rave music. His Rave Remix takes all this and goes even further, adding rave hoovers and a thundering breakbeat, plus a vocal sample that comes from the top-end of the speakers and pins you, the hairs on your arms standing up and people around you whistling and whooping. Wait for the breakdown. Arms in the air. ‘What’s your name? Where you from? Nice one.’

Rheinzand do things differently. They use the same starting point, the repeating synth riff that runs through all these remixes, but shroud it in a cloud of fuzz, through which eventually other sounds start to emerge. A hand drum. A high pitch drone. A filtered ripple of one of the arpeggios. An acoustic guitar. A violin. When it feels like it should be snapping into focus soon, the build up about to break, instead we are go deeper and deeper into the fog. Everything is seems simultaneously the centre and at the edge. The drone dominates. Smothering and surrounding everything. The violin tries to cut through, returning and disappearing. The hand drums bubble away but can’t reach the surface. Panpipes make an appearance but are soon overwhelmed. Rheinzand’s rumbling resonance never stops. It’s a long dark road, it’s a film with no end, it’s the tune they play as the lights go out.

Heavyhandz’s Cages is out now on LESDK. 

You can find more proper, on point, prose from Adam Turner over at his own brilliant blog, The Bagging Area. Adam is also part of the admin team at the mighty Flightpath Estate.