Salon Records’ Summer Series

Over the course of the summer Salon Records released a series of 3 limited 7s, all of which deserve a mention. The first came from Bruno Pronsato. His “Is Anybody Straight Up” is house. Angular, jerky, but jacking, and held together by a buzzing bass and the reciting of the title. Percussion is thrown in and out, increasing the funk, while the whole track is soaked in synthetic singing bowl textures. “Shelly Plays The Bells” is slower, stranger, its beats and spoken lyrics fogged by gauzy, grainy vapour. The results like a dub of Fusion’s “Dirty Kay”. Next was Matthew Dear’s “New Drug”. A shot of stuttered, spiky, smart, subversive synth pop, where collaged vocal fragments are hooked up to the kick, percussively, beneath sinister slithering. Dear’s deep baritone delivery recalling David Sylvian’s recent collaboration with Lucrecia Dalt, and fizzing, fuzzed machines swapping in for where a more traditional song might have put riffing guitars. On the filp, the disco looped “Head In The…