- Dark and elegant yet still funky house and techno.
- In the rarefied world of modern vinyl diggers, there are plenty of duos, from childhood friends The Ghost to partners like Slow Life founders Laurine and Cecilio. One of the more surprising (and endearing) pairings to emerge in the past few years has been Marco Maranza, AKA Quest, and Christian Browne (Christian AB). Maranza is known for dark, electro-soldered techno (the man runs a label that translates to "The Devil's Note"), while Browne is a bit lighter on his feet, not afraid of the more melodic end of the house and electro spectrum. But ever since meeting while thumbing through some of London's dustiest crates, the two have clicked. First as friends, then as roommates when Browne moved to Berlin, and now as one of the most in-demand back-to-back pairings gracing dance floors from Tisno to fabric.
As DJs, there's a yin-and-yang to how they play records. The occasionally pillowy house track is swallowed up by a gnarled acid banger before they find some sort of breakbeat middle ground. There's a similar dynamic to Browne's latest release for Manza's label, La Nota Del Diablo. Red Tears is a careful balance of late night tension and early morning twilight.
The epic nine-minute opener "Doctor Darkness" starts with a bassline and chord progression that are about as inviting as a trip down Elm Street at midnight. Three minutes in, though, Browne introduces an organ melody that slowly brightens up the whole track, transforming it from a tech-house-of-horrors into something altogether more wholesome. The title track flips the script. It starts as a springy bit of house with an '80s bounce to the drums, but the second half switches the chords to a minor key and adds little nasty snarls of a 303. Red Tears is, in short, the perfect distillation of what Browne and Manza have called their trademark "dark elegance." Dashes of strikingly beautiful melody sneak the shadowy corners of the dancefloor all over undeniably funky drums.
Tracklist01. Dr. Darkness
02. Hearing Voices (Again)
03. Red Tears
04. Machina Drummer