Passarani

W.O.W.

Genre: TECHNO / HOUSE

Boomkat Product Review:

The master of Italo-electro makes a vital return with the powerful, playful and emotive drive of ‘W.O.W.’ for Vladimir Ivkovic’s Offen Music

Arriving some 25 years since Passarani helped shape the infamous Roman electro sound alongside characters such as Lory D and Leo Anibaldi, ’W.O.W.’ finds him tiling all the styles he’s touched on over the years - IDM, electro, acid, house and disco - with a crisp definition of his signature, razor sharp rhythm programming and lushly affective analog synth arrangements.

Where his earliest work was indebted to or paralleled the bold futurism of Detroit techno and its UK antecedents from AFX and the Rephlex crew, and later releases found him diving headlong into deep house inspirations and killer disco edits as part of Tiger & Woods, on ‘W.O.W.’ Passarani combines intense technicality with intuitive dancefloor suss in eight glorious parts that form a full image of his style.

From the early ‘90s new age promise of ‘Coldrain’ with its Plastikman-like slow/fast drums and melancholic euphoria, to the woozy deep house charm of ‘Strings Fair’, he charts a course thru 25 years of deep dancefloor history, coming off like Cybotron jamming with Alexander Robotnick in ‘Drumy Dream’, while ‘Get Down’ delivers screaming payload of Chicago house/EBM, ‘Innowave’ trades in exquisite instrumental synth-pop, and ‘Minerals’ works out an infectious blend of NYC and SoYo garage depths, before ‘’Talk To Me’ reels with ribboning chromatic arps, then momentarily turns into a Hoover driven house beast.

For the party, the car, the bedroom, this is a killer album.

2LP (8)