Robert Babicz - Immortal Changes - Vinyl Edition - Vol 1

Few producers have reached a level of international respect that Cologne's Robert Babicz has over the years. His ability to blur the lines between genres is impeccable, often taking techno and thrusting it far into territories that even  progressive house and trance connoisseurs have come to appreciate. Babicz's latest album, Immortal Changes, does just that; by embracing melodic song structures (which have all but become lost in today's house and techno landscape); while maintaining the gritty appeal that likely lured Marc Romboy to release the album on Systematic.

Immortal Changes first EP release comes out swinging hard, with a massive remix from Stimming, along with two of  Immortal Changes most inspiring cuts. The first being Chordy, a track in which Babicz describes in his own words as "An industrial western city, warm and big, hi-tek (song)." His depiction is an accurate account of  the one track on the album that most closely resembles the trendy deep house sound that has been overtaking much of Europe and the U.S. recently. The groove is centered around an insistent, pulsating chord that remains at the forefront throughout the track, varying slightly as Babicz' intermitantly adds delays, and shuffles things up with slight percussive variations. As Chordy comes to it’s crescendo, the welcome embrace of sliced vocals and jazzy horns simply cement the track's dance floor appeal.

When talking remixes, it's always exciting when artists are paired who owe their success to wildly different musical backgrounds. Such is the case with Come Closer, a modernized crowd-pleaser which gets the remix rinsing from none other than Martin Stimming, a man known for his favoritism for organic instruments and real-world recordings. His rendition of Come Closer is what we’ve come to expect from Stimming – stripped down, yet beefed-up by an insistent groove that doesn’t let you go. Utilising a swelling bassline to suck you in, Stimming brims the surface with lush keys and bubbling staccatos, which all rise closer to the surface in anticipation for an epic breakdown in the latter-half of the excursion.
 
To round the release off, Babicz offers up a new mix of his classic, Dark Flower; a big-room remix that straddles the line between techno and progressive trance, in many ways. Big swells, breakdowns and a thrusting bassline dominate the show, in a remix that could likely be Robert Babicz’s biggest potential for crossover mainstream appeal yet.