The Peter Pan of hard house is back from Never Say Neverland with a delightful offering of hard house destined to rattle your cage good and proper!
Slightly Mad and Build It Up make up for the massive gap since the last time we heard from Maddox. Hard house with a wide variety of additional sounds and styles, something he has never been afraid to do.
An 80’s style synth melody running over a fat bassline powers Slightly Mad long, in an almost Dutch style. The great build climaxes with a breakbeat driven Mentasm-ish stabbed arrangement. Enter the kick drum and it leads you into pure chaos and a guaranteed pathway into escapism. Yes… this has a whiff of tough Belgian rave/techno written all over it and I love that!
Build It up is very Untidy sounding and could have easily been well placed on that label but it’s the techy sounds blended in for good measure that justify its release on the flagship label. Build is just what this does. The build up following the drop is immense and a synthsational! It has a raw and rough feel to it and you can literally feel the track lifting you clean off the floor.
You’d be hard done trying to decide which one was the best out of the two, and trust me it will be difficult to decide. Is this hard house as we know it? Like the man’s good looks his sound hasn’t aged, but as always, is innovative.
I definitely want to hear more of this and I can’t wait to hear it played out on a huge system… Welcome back Paul Maddox!
Have a listen… See if you agree with me…
