Nico Purman: The Bubble (Vakant)

Vakant used to be such a sure thing for me. At the height of my vinyl buying days in the mid 00s, I would pretty much assume anything on the label was top-drawer quality. However, as my music-buying has grown increasingly digital and my minimal techno fixation has subsided (believe it or not!), many of their releases started to pass by me unnoticed. Nico Purman has always been somewhat of an under-the-radar producer who deserves some good attention in my opinion, so the pairing of Purman and Vakant (not the first, as I discovered when I dug a bit from here) is appropriate. Both of the tracks herein complement each other; they share a similar sensibility and even a comparable palette of sounds. “The Bubble” is all about the bassline hook, a fat filtered sawtooth that anchors everything around it. Even though “The Bubble” has the better hook, I prefer “Blow My Mind” for all its little melodic sprigs and sprinkles. Neither achieves the heights he’s reached in the past (Ciudad de Nubes is still my favorite), but a nice couple of tracks nonetheless.

Buy it: Boomkat | iTunes