House Is A Feeling

If you checked out last week’s radio show you may have been blown away by Ink and Needle’s amazing “Seven” on their own Tattoo Records. I’d been meaning to write a little piece about this mysterious Danish duo for a while now.

From their Discogs comes a mission statement: Tattoorecs is label with a very simple concept. The tracks released don’t have titles, they have tattoos. Tattoos are the ultimate dedication of love. Wether its a name, a symbol or a number tattoos are there because they are important to the owner. They dont have to be beautiful or elegant, and they dont have a meaning to anyone but the owner. Some people seek acceptance and follow the mainstream with their body art. Some people push the limit and reinvent what a tattoo can be. Some people stay true, and go old school with their tattoos Thats why tattoos and music are so alike. These tracks are a part of us. We have created them with our hearts.

It’s nice to see they think creatively and illogically about music, even if you don’t have a tattoo. I’ve been keeping an eye on Tattoo for a while. I really like their stubborn refusal to engage with conventional artistic identity (not that this approach is a novel one, in techno) and the tracks too have a really lo-fi, raw quality to them that fits the character of the label.

I thought their last release, “Five/Six”, was excellent, but “Seven” is surely set to be their biggest smash yet, and one of the anthems of the summer. It’s a long sprawling epic built around a nagging Detroit style riff. In the breakdown it morphs from ferocious techno into mournful synth led trance. It’s certainly one of the best tracks of the year.

If you do like this please buy the 12 and support the artist and the label. The flipside, yes it’s called “Eight”, is also rather good here, and “Five/Six” is excellent too. And here’s a scoop: if my calculations are correct, the next release will be called “Nine/Ten”.