Artist: Steve Porter
Title: Nordica / The Return
Label: Fade Records
By: Chloe Harris | 17 November 2002
Tracklist:

• A: Nordica
• B: The Return

Steve Porter "Nordica / The Return"

A man who needs no introduction, Steve Porter is back with another belting number. His classy sounds, and ever so heavy drums make it hard to resist giving into the funk. His seriously low bass, and driving beats, pull you into his beautiful melodies, and spit you out, wanting more.

'Nordica' starts out with a rumbling bassline and some lovely sparkling sounds. The drums are constantly fusing with quick changes, and the sparse sounds fill up the space. A chord hits, and pushes you into a spacey whoosh sound. Bouncing melody, and drums that carry it, travel on and into the falling and delaying sounds. In this song, Steve seems to have gone on a similar way to make something like Quivver would do. Driving and funky, with beautiful lush sweeps, this song is a nice chugger, that keeps on going.

'The Return' starts out with some nice clean beats, and cute electronic high sounds that seem to flutter. The claps come in and are a bit crunchy, as the low bass comes in. His signature drums flow into the break, as we pop, curl and twist with all sorts of sounds, then quickly fall back into drums. A faint sound lingers overhead, and the bass kicks in again. Every sound is moving, and delaying, and falling in random places, while the lingering sound above, moves on, and up closer. As all the sounds play off each other, we wind down into the dreamiest break I've heard in a long time. It's very wet, and deep, and things coreless with each other. Bouncing back into the drums, we rock all the way out. This tune is definitely a sound for the end of the night.

This is an exquisite tune to come out on Fade. Check out their newly redesigned website, www.faderecords.com, along with all their artists information. Steve produces some of the best progressive music that I know of. It's beautiful, and deep, and driving. This will be in record boxes for a while.