Blue Hour
Origins

New York House and Disco legend Eli Escobar has been releasing music for over 20 years under various aliases as well as running incredible parties and his own label Night People. We’ve been huge fans of his productions over the years and when a chance to release some of his stellar music on our Phonica main label came about, we were over the moon.The “Find A Way EP” kicks off with “FindAWay2Day”, combining heavy hitting 808 drum work with deeply satisfying vocal samples, a beyond groovy bassline and 80s Electro-Funk galore. “Something Inside Of Me” leans towards a classic US Deep Garage House blueprint, with sampled chord stabs, mesmerising vocal hooks and MPC style swung drum programming.

Back in 2021, when Volodymyr Gnatenko agreed to work on his debut album, none of us could have predicted it would be released, post-pandemic, against the backdrop of war. At the time, the 23-year-old producer from Lutsk was riding high on a string of well-received 12s for labels such as Where We Met and Animals On Psychedelics, besides local Ukraine labels such as LSS557 and Rhythm Buro. He was, between covid closures, playing live at Kyiv clubs such as Closer and Kureni, looking to tour in Europe, and spending every spare second making music.How things change. When missiles began to rain on Kyiv, Gnatenko, alongside a few friends from Closer, hid in his studio. For a while, the bombings did not stop. But for the producer, neither did the music-making. Choosing to stay in the city, he continues to make beats, managing only to mix down between bombing raids. He changed his first name to match that of his president, ditching the previous spelling of his name because it was the same as the aggressor, “[the same as] my worst enemy, I am ashamed and disgusted that I started my career with it”. The album speaks of softer, easier times. A combination of rich ambience, and laidback breaks alongside loose progressive and trance-fused dancefloor tracks, this debut brings together all the strands that Gnatenko plays with. The process, he says, was exhausting and long. Yet the results are lighter, fresher. Maybe because, he says, “it is dedicated to my future wife. All the tracks are my words of love for her". Deeply hypnotic and freely moving between ideas, it feels like it was made a lifetime ago, not a matter of months. Now, it resonates with a new defiance. It is a debut with an extra layer of meaning.

Kincaid returns to Control Freak for a main label release with the Sugar EP - 4 saccharine, club-ready weapons from a producer at the top of his game.Drawing on an array of club sounds from trance to UK garage and the best in contemporary leftfield techno, the EP marks our most rave-ready statement yet, with percussive drum tracks and soaring euphoric pads - carefully crafted for dark rooms and packed dancefloors.On the A-Side, 'Air-ism' and 'Sugar' bubble with peak time energy - a pair of secret weapons which haven’t left our record bags for months now. B1 'E' is a pounding, energetic 4x4 pumper, whilst 'Sycamore' closes things out with moody, shuffling drums and powerful low end pressure.