00:AM is a collective, based in Montreal, centred around bringing forward-thinking electronic musicians to the city, and more recently, around providing a platform on which artists can release their own music. Previously, they've released two compilations featuring a variety of artists from across the sphere. Now, they present their third, featuring D. Tiffany, AceMo, Flørist, and Max Wyatt in a quartet of variation and effective rhythms.
To be clear, this compilation is not a mind-bending excursion in abstraction. Without a great degree of fuss, each of the four tracks is quite clearly destined for a dance floor at some point in the night. There isn't really a clear commonality between them, but in saying that, it means that each artist is free to create without much regard for a predetermined "label sound."
The most polished and intricate effort comes from D. Tiffany's "Butterfly Foundation." Wobbling rhythms and shifting synthesisers make for a five-minute broken-beat delight that intrigues and excites without ever growing cumbersome. "A Dub 2 Toronto" is a much more restrained endeavour, with its mellow pad sound underpinning the entirety of a track that manages to be effective without being particularly cutting-edge. On "Parametric," Flørist sticks to 16th note repetition that swells and subsides, and finally, Max Wyatt rounds things out with the euphoric and acid-twinged "Nu World," which has the best hook on the compilation.
At this point, it's clear that variety is 00AM003's greatest strength, with a good blend of artists still on the come-up, and others already more established. If anything, the record is representative of the brand of eclecticism that the party series has strived to bring to Montreal over the years, and we can only hope that the seeds of the nascent label continue to grow in the future as have their events in the past.
(00:AM)To be clear, this compilation is not a mind-bending excursion in abstraction. Without a great degree of fuss, each of the four tracks is quite clearly destined for a dance floor at some point in the night. There isn't really a clear commonality between them, but in saying that, it means that each artist is free to create without much regard for a predetermined "label sound."
The most polished and intricate effort comes from D. Tiffany's "Butterfly Foundation." Wobbling rhythms and shifting synthesisers make for a five-minute broken-beat delight that intrigues and excites without ever growing cumbersome. "A Dub 2 Toronto" is a much more restrained endeavour, with its mellow pad sound underpinning the entirety of a track that manages to be effective without being particularly cutting-edge. On "Parametric," Flørist sticks to 16th note repetition that swells and subsides, and finally, Max Wyatt rounds things out with the euphoric and acid-twinged "Nu World," which has the best hook on the compilation.
At this point, it's clear that variety is 00AM003's greatest strength, with a good blend of artists still on the come-up, and others already more established. If anything, the record is representative of the brand of eclecticism that the party series has strived to bring to Montreal over the years, and we can only hope that the seeds of the nascent label continue to grow in the future as have their events in the past.