review
The third mix is the reason Cortona's Bedrock debut works
Xtaci earns its four tracks by giving one hook three different rooms, and the Balearic Jukebox Nu-Beat Mix is the version built to last the whole night.
deepmelodic
Cortona's first release for Bedrock Records landed on 31 January. Four tracks, but really two ideas. "Xtaci" gets worked three separate ways — a Vocal Club Mix, an Extended Dub, a Balearic Jukebox Nu-Beat Mix. "Bearfunk" closes it out alone, unconnected to any of them. Play the vocal mix and you get exactly what a vocal club mix is supposed to give, straight through in seven minutes and change. Skip the dub on a casual listen and you won't lose much, though a DJ building a set from nothing will want it for exactly that reason. The Balearic cut is the one that earns this record its four tracks instead of one — the version we keep reaching for. Seven minutes forty-five, a groove that chugs slow and thick like molasses, holding the hook back just long enough to tease before it blends into the vocal. The longest thing here, and built to outlast the other two.
Three formats beat three songs. A room can take the vocal hook once a night. Twice, if the crowd wants it back. The dub is the DJ's tool. Same skeleton, no top line, built to sit in the middle of a set without fighting whatever plays either side of it. The Balearic Jukebox cut has its own name for a reason. It isn't chasing the peak-time job the vocal mix already has. Three formats of one record is an ordinary move for a label with this much history. Making the least commercial one the best is not.
Xtaci is Cortona's second release, full stop, and his first for a label that's been doing this since 1998. John Digweed and Nick Muir's Bedrock, one reason progressive house survived long enough to mean something specific instead of describing one sound. Before this there was "Foresta," on Music To Die For. That's a fast route onto a label with Bedrock's weight behind it. It argues for itself. Nobody hands a second-ever release to Digweed's own imprint as a favour.
"Bearfunk" closes the EP, and closes it well, mostly by being the thing the other three tracks aren't. Seven minutes. No vocal. A title that reads like a joke about the genre it's filed under, then plays it straighter than the joke suggests. After twenty-two minutes of one hook worked three ways, a fourth track with nothing to do with any of them is the right call. It's the record remembering it's an EP, not a single with two remixes bolted on for padding.
There's not much of a public presence behind the Cortona name yet. A Facebook page, and the releases themselves. Normal, two records into a catalogue. The music does what an introduction is supposed to do. It tells a booker, or another DJ, exactly where this act sits. Somewhere between a straight club record and a Balearic one, closer to Bedrock's own middle distance than either extreme.
None of this needs the vocal hook itself to be a great one. It doesn't need to be. Three solid mixes of a decent song beat one great mix of a song that can only be played once a set. That's the actual skill on show across this EP, more than any single production choice. Knowing which version goes where, and building enough of them that a DJ never has to choose between playing "Xtaci" and playing something else that night.