Spotlight: Hot Concept

Teplice’s music first came to me through E.M.M.A’s excellent ‘Pastel Prisms’ label, and then more geographically adjacent when we both briefly lived in the same building. Her single ‘Late In The Day’ was really singular, the sort of record that I can envision becoming a cult classic in years to come, discovered by a new era of NTS breakfast listeners. The two EPs that Teplice has produced for Hot Concept are equally beautiful and thoughtful, and her odd pop music is able to disseminate interesting philosophies and personal thoughts while putting melody and songwriting front-and-centre. She also wrote ‘Birthday Song’, a valiant effort to produce a new variation on the classic, copyright-free ‘Happy Birthday’ song, as disliked by Larry David. I’ll let you seek that one out for a special occasion, but will leave you with ‘Call It Home’, from earlier this year.

I first met Rachel, known to you as Yr Lovely Dead Moon, through mutual friends during the locked down summer of 2020, when a bunch of us stayed at a big old country house in rural Brandenburg. This was a sort of leftist free space, where creatives attend personal retreats to find time to pursue their creative endeavors or just mull things over. Rachel explained she had carved out the time to do herself this in the past, which I was immediately impressed with (I exclusively undertake all my deep, bitter thinking in the shower), and she was also extremely forthright with another group occupying the other side of the house when they neoliberally used our margarine without asking. I was even more impressed! Although I did leave early because I was too hungover and disinterested in tarot reading. Typical virgo!!

In the time since, we have worked together on two Yr Lovely Dead Moon albums on Hot Concept. The second, ‘Don’t Look Now’ was developed in conjunction with Initativmusik, a generously funded German arts council for music, and is a knotty, ambitious riposte against gentrification and other alienating contemporary rot. Like the best artists and thinkers, Rachel’s work poses as many questions as it provides answers, but in the single ‘Sun Dance’ she has written a perfect slice of psychedelia, and I have been very lucky to release compositions of this caliber on the label. She also returned to that very house and its grounds to film the wonderful video, this time with lots of high-camp costuming, more tarot-informed aesthetics and presumably, enough margarine for everyone on set.

I’m lucky to spend a lot of time in the studio with Graeme, who is a formidably talented producer and able to collaborate with a wide range of different artists. His work with Ireen Amnes or Mor Elian is a mile away from what I put him through, for example. As thanks for tolerating my stained patchwork quilt of half-sketched arrangements and crusty samples, I really wanted to release a solo production of his, and ruffling through his folder of nearly, but not quite there ideas, this one immediately leapt out. The energy and sense of catharsis on ‘Gliding Again’ still hasn’t worn off on me, and I’m always impressed by quite how detailed the record is, especially when it comes to the enormous breakdown, which, like all good thrillers, leaves them screaming for more. Now, to negotiate the sequel…

Currently turning out a golden run of effective Bandcamp dancefloor edits that would surely make Ron Hardy blush, Bleaching Agent’s solo productions are also a thing of beauty for DJs who want to keep things unpredictable and ‘punk’, without either employing a full-scale Jamal Moss assault or else, drippy modern EBM for goths on coke. As an alternative ‘Faster Silence’ absolutely throbs for this instance, riveted with lots of tiny arrangement touches and weird details that unfold gradually and somewhat magically. Originally premiered by The Ransom Note, no less

Recently ascending to Palms Trax’s CWPT imprint for his second ‘saxophonic’ EP, Tahl Klainman’s cassette for Hot Concept is an avant-garde delight. The brain-tickling monologue from our friend Steph Lee which anchors ‘Left Hand’ also forms the basis for two amazing, contrasting tempo remixes from your former Social guest Jay Duncan. I think the ALFOS adjacent ‘Spirit of Sabre’ edition is the pick for this particular corner of the internet. Rarely deeo shit.

Dogshow are a duo who work out of Liverpool’s dockside Invisible Wind Factory venue, a warehouse of delights from which they lead the design on this year’s Eurovision parade through the city. Now, that’s showbiz! Before that, they recorded this three track EP that culminates in the maritime nu-disco of ‘It’s The C’, which features vocals from Bextasy, from Stealing Sheep. I believe the roots of the melody of this one lie in an improvised performance at a folk festival, and certainly, it’s perhaps the finest sea shanty-adjacent dance record since Bullion’s ‘Blue Pedro’. 

Long before the ‘fast techno’ discourse dominated dance music discourse, creating hundreds of memes of varying quality, birthing the term ‘tiktok techno’ and forcing thirty-somethings to emerge from the pandemic with the same sense of bafflement that ultimately comes for us all, Brisbane DJ and producer Pokies handed Hot Concept this pitch-perfect parody of the tempo wars. I have never had the gall to play this one out, but perhaps you will?

“I’ve known Haamed Ratyal from the internet for a long time, and always really loved his productions, which kick like old Ben Sims records, a touch of hardgroove and percussive madness interlaced with samples and textures from his Dad’s vast Bollywood record collection. When he sent me a few samples in 2018, I immediately felt that they would be a good starting point for a record label, and so Beigean (Bay-shun, cheeky Leicester slang for ‘Beige Asian’, I later learned) became the first ever Hot Concept release. This is his second, proof that a really great ‘tool’ record can be just as charismatic as a rich melody, especially when delivered through the right system.”

Ady is undoubtedly one of Berlin’s most knowledgeable and loveable club DJs. In a city where DJs often plow specific furrows until all that’s left is dust and powder, Ady’s sets are as informed by his love of pop, rock and alternative music in general, while always managing to turn shit upside down. What a delight then, to let him indulge his miserable side with his debut release, which emerged on a tape last year known as ‘Makom’. Rescued from a frazzled hard-drive and somehow transmitting that atmosphere with ease, ‘Makom’ is proper outsider music from, well, a proper outsider happy to dance outside the algorithm.