Artist: Various Artists
Title: '[QR]D.263.SPE.26'
Label: COD3 QR
COD3 QR began in 2018 as a Laurent Garnier and Scan X project that kept its artists anonymous: the first various artist EPs came out with no names on them, and the producers were revealed a couple of months later.
Garnier curates it with Oliver Way, and it is a label we have covered plenty, from our premiere of Steve Bug and Josh Wink's 'Go Back' to Voltaire's 'Some House'.
This one is a Super Eight, the label's eight-track digital format, and the spread is wide. Mr. De', the Electrofunk Records boss who helped build ghettotech in Detroit (a sound we have covered through DJ Godfather's 'Get Back'), opens it with 'Please Believe It', reworked into disco house by Jules Wells. Wells is a label regular with records on Planet E, KMS, Submerge, Twilight 76 and Brique Rouge.
London's Suburban Architecture, Chris Read and James Curry, bring drum and bass on their first COD3 QR outing (and our favourite track on the release), 'Focus (VIP Mix)'. The pair started the project in 2019 and have eight EPs to their name, plus two remix series of their own: six volumes of 'Architecture Dubs', which has pulled in 4Hero, Peshay and Blame, and two of 'New Town Dubs', with Kloke and Tim Reaper among the names.
Establish11 is another first-timer on COD3 QR, with 'Pyrite'. The Brighton DJ and producer works across dubstep, bass music and 140, and has a single on CXL Records, 'CLAMBER', alongside the self-released 'Mobius' and 'Conduit' this year and a free download, 'Check 'em Out', through MP3 Records. At home in Brighton he has shared a bill with Hamdi at Quarters.
Uruguay's Diego Infanzon brings house with 'Some People Walk Away'. He has been releasing since 2012, and his biggest run came on Christian Smith's Tronic, from the 'Cosmos EP' in 2020 to 'Go Back To The Basics', which the label then put out again in remixed form. Around that run sit records on Rino Cerrone's Unrilis, Anja Schneider's Sous Music and Tiga's Turbo, with Intec, Saved and Stacey Pullen's Blackflag on the list too.
Irish DJ, producer and live performer Ian O'Donovan is back on COD3 QR with 'Alive', a superb late night house heater. He moves between techno, house and electro, and his catalogue takes in KMS, where his 'Saharan Sunset EP' came out in 2015, a string of Intec records, and three EPs apiece on Bedrock and Tronic since 2023.
Djos's Davis has been making records in Strasbourg for around twenty years, and got into electronic music through Daft Punk, Laurent Garnier and Jean-Michel Jarre. The Garnier link goes beyond influence: he remixed Garnier for 'The Cloud Making Machine Reworks' back in 2005. He runs Exit Audio, his own label, has released on 96Musique, Parquet Recordings and F-Communications, and has remixed Superfunk and Antoine Clamaran. His track here is 'Global Static'.
Jim Rivers, based in Maidstone, mixed an instalment of Global Underground's 'Nubreed' series in 2009 and had records on Bedrock, Renaissance, Intec and Saved in the same era. As Copy Paste Soul he released on Suara, Exploited and Detone. Following a break of a few years, he is back with records on Traum, Poker Flat and Rhythm Cult, and here with 'Strelitzia', his latest for COD3 QR.
French producer Loloman has the last word with 'Accordeur HS'. His first EP, 'Versus', came out on Nocturbulous Techno City in 2019, and Paris label Brique Rouge has been his most regular home since, with 'R-Evolution', 'Melodies' and 'Tight & Wide'. He has also released on Metrohm and on MB Elektronics, the label that put out Ian O'Donovan's 'Cloud Cutter EP', and he has turned up on several COD3 QR compilations before this one. Brique Rouge also features in our review of Andrey Sirotkin's 'Nothing Behind the Words'.
