Artist: Jonathan Hart
Title: Vices
Label: Alternative Route
By: Nick Bower | 23 September 2003
Tracklist:

• A: Original Mix
• B: The Montreal Nights Dub

Jonathan Hart "Vices"

Highly respected Internet station ProtonRadio.com's Technical Ops Manager, Jonathan Hart developed a healthy obsession for electronic music at an early age, dabbling with both keyboards and computers in front of his curious peers. As is often the case, these early musical experiments developed into something more serious as the years rolled by. Hart made time to not only perform his own material live in Toronto and New York, find his way round a studio, but also end up landing himself on the Proton Radio team. Ultimately he was one of the key names who helped shape both the growth and sound of the station, leading it onto the online broadcasting success that it is becoming today.

As is the norm it seems with Alternative Route releases, the latest signing to the label, Jonathan Hart's 'Vices', throws up a mutant of numerous sounds. All these diverse elements create an interesting, ever changing if not slightly tricky track to illustrate. Delving headlong into an upbeat 4/4 kick, 'Vices' drops crisp snares, punchy bongo percussion and a sampled male vocal. Stabby electrical sounding blips play against an equally electric and gritty sounding guitar noise which a few seconds later opens out into a full riff. Rising waves of drifting synth sounds oscillate, ascending to a peak before the whole track blasts into a tough and chunky overdrive. Morphing filtered disco-esque synths take over, adding an essence of late-night dancefloor sexiness, a sound which slowly becomes increasingly coloured as bubbling sounds dive around in the background.

Interestingly, for the B side - the 'Montreal Nights Dub', Hart has decided to team up with a studio partner, Mark Omni, to deliver this version of 'Vices'. Omni's added influence over this track certainly shines through, offering an even more dubby and heady take on the original mix. Echoed bongos and shimmering synth sounds create an 'other-worldly' and slightly epic edge to the mix. However the production still retains a whole barrow-load of funk - delivering a deeper, sleazier and sexier feel, really summing up the track's title 'Vices' rather well. The 'Montreal Nights Dub' has a driving and funky groove which forms the crux of the whole mix, a sleekness that somehow differs to the sound that the original brings. Halfway through the underlying beat changes - surprisingly catching you off guard by swapping to a soft breakbeat, before 'Vices' reverts back to the 4/4 beat towards the latter part of the track. Overall, the mix is a funky and seductive number and for my money this is the better mix out of the two.

With 'Vices' Jonathan Hart tempts us with a particularly potent and enticing production. After a few listens you can feel yourself getting slowly hooked, and pulled into it's grip, as any of the djs who have been supporting it such as Danny Howells and Desyn Masiello himself would agree.