- The title of DJ Sprinkles and Mark Fell's new EP—their third together—seems self-referential. It might allude to a lengthy speech by Tony Benn, the late Labour Party politician, used on "Fresh (Sprinkles Alt. Mix)" that lends a perceptive, if slightly wooden, bit of rhetoric to a deep house record. (The pair have previous, too: Complete Spiral, their first EP together, featured trade union leader Arthur Scargill on his soapbox.) But Fresh Insights EP 2, which presents two Sprinkles remixes of tracks featured on EP 1, could also refer to the blooming studio partnership of Terre Thaemlitz and Fell.
Fell, formerly of glitchy minimalist duo SND, contributes nothing of his experimental aesthetic to Fresh Insights EP 2, but the record's clean contours do at least gesture to this approach. Nevertheless, the record reaffirms both artists' reputation for excellence. On "Fresh (Sprinkles Alt. Mix)," Benn's speech is accompanied by spiralling xylophone notes and fidgety synthetic horns that seem to parp whenever he says something noteworthy, like a red pen circling passages in a textbook.
"Insights (Sprinkles Alt. Mix)" is as easy-going as house records get. There's a female vocal, slender and slightly warped, which ghosts in and out of the song's day-lit gaps. The track has lots of detail—bongos, handclaps, block percussion, kneading chords, chime-like melodies—but it's still spacious and light. Both tracks are hard to find fault with.
TracklistA1 Insights (Sprinkles Alt. Mix)
B1 Fresh (Sprinkles Alt. Mix)