Gettin' Hotter by Afronaut

Exclusive promo Out Bandcamp FRIDAY 4th October exclusively on Co Operation Records...

Broken beat pioneer and founding member of bruk supergroup Bugz in the Attic, Afronaut™, releases “Gettin’ Hotter” along with a dub version, “Gettin’ Hotter Still”.

‘“Gettin' Hotter” is an ode to the days of Eightball Records and the jazz house sounds of New York and Chicago. The original subbier mix features Simbad on sax, with Mark de Clive-Lowe's bass and keys tying it all together, including a small cameo from Colonel Red. Mix 2 is a more stripped-back affair, sonically primed to fire up all dancefloors with Danny Grudgemonkey on upright bass. Mark Force & Zed Bias on the sonics & mixdown,”.

The instrumental and multi-syncopated rhythms emulate the sound of ’91 Chicago clubs and the underground dance culture of the time. “This particular track was about fusing House, Broken Beat, and Jazz,” Orin adds.

The sound was inspired by early Phil Asher and Cassio Ware tracks, which Orin and the West London crew played at parties, as well as an old ZigZag Jazz record or two from Chicago. The track started as an untitled, dubplate, dropped on couple floors by mega-force Louie Vega and Sy Sez, and making rounds at Ibiza’s Glitterbox and Defected events. Afronaut revisited the tune after seeing reactions to the guys spinning it in their set, refining it for its highly anticipated release.

Afronaut™ is the primary alias of Orin Walters, a pivotal figure in the broken beat scene. Walters is not only one of the top
producers in the realm of broken beat - a genre characterised by its heavily rhythmic, syncopated chopped-up beats and breaks – but he also played a key role in forming and shaping first the Bugz in the Attic collective and also the CoOp movement, their BBC and Mixmag award winning infamous club night and ground breaking record label, Co-Operation records - a concept born out of Orin's frustration with not enough clubs or DJs supporting bruk music." It was based on a larger extension of the Bugz collective concept with Mark Force adding in and coming up with the name; CoOp". Naut adds.

Walters has significantly contributed to UK dance recorded output through various other labels he has established or supported, such as Mousetrap, Suckers Need Bass, and Bitasweet. Walters' route into dance music began in the mid-'80s when he started listening to pirate radio stations and frequenting both acid house & acid jazz warehouse parties. It wasn't long before he was promoting warehouse and all-night parties, then spinning house on London pirates and holding residencies at numerous clubs, such as Astoria alongside Top Buzz and Ronnie Scott's with Roy the Roach and Why Originals. He spent a short time staying in Chicago during the early '90s, where he DJed and helped operate small club nights at venues like Kaboom and the Red Dog. Returning to the UK, he became a fixture at Kickin' Records and began collaborating with Phil Asher and Daz-I-Kue around '93 in Kickin's Basement 282 studios.

Walters' Afronaut productions tend to sound more directly soul-influenced than those of his counterparts – on "Transcend Me", which is often heralded as being one of the best broken beat tracks of all time, has an easy, free-flowing, soulful nature supplanted with complex, sputtering drum programming. His debut full-length as Afronaught (Afronaut), the excellent ‘Shapin' Fluid’, was released on R&S subsidiary Apollo and is now considered a modern classic in the genre.

'A celebration of everything joyful, positive and inventive about British Music.' – The Observer
‘A hedonist’s hoedown that George Clinton would be proud of.’ – The Daily Telegraph
‘Inventive, exciting and endlessly entertaining” – IDJ Mag