Review: Mat.Joe – Heart To Find EP (OFF)

Label. OFF Recordings (OFF)
Artist. Mat.Joe
Title. Heart To Find EP
Fotmat: Digital / 12“
Cat number. OFF035
Release date: 15.08.2012 (digital)
Web: http://off-recordings.com
Distribution: Intergroove Germany

The first time I received a track by Mat.Joe was exactly one year ago: November 2011 – they released the Walking By & Fly Forever EP on Semester Musik with Niconé and Hotbox remixes in December, when I took some time off to fly off to my beloved Switzerland – and had no capacity to feature them.

Fortunately, I met these guys by chance at a party of my old pal Nhan Solo, Pammin (aka Crek) and Mario Basanov (Mario & Vidis). They were very sympathetic at first sight – you could see they enjoyed the music and had a good time, which is always a good sign: if a DJ cannot dance, or does not enjoy music, it makes no sense for the audience to have fun, either.

Nhan Solo gave his thumbs up for an interview, but it was not until yesterday that I was reminded of these guys, when they invited me to their gig. So in retrospect, introducing their biggest hit and my favourite pick of their tracks so far: Heart To Find EP (OFF035)

Mat.Joe – Heart To Find EP (OFF035)

Tracklist
1. Mat.Joe – Heart To Find
2. Mat.Joe – Safe Flight
3. Mat.Joe – Safe Flight (Audiojack’s Closed-Eye Hallucination)
4. Mat.Joe – Safe Flight (Audiojack’s Headsdown Rework)
5. Mat.Joe – Stay

Track by Track Review

1. Mat.Joe – Heart To Find

This is the title track of the EP and is one of the best deep house tracks of the year 2012 – even though I do not like the 90ies sampling trend. The bouncing bassline, the pitched down vocals of the sampled SFTP’s original track “My Love Is The Shhh!“ – the guys did everything right on this one and turned it into one of my favourite tracks of 2012. It is not easy to impress me, but this one is a BOMB!!
BTW, here the track the guys sampled from, which RnB lovers might know:
M/V: Something For The People: My Love Is The Shhh!

2. Mat.Joe – Safe Flight

Okay, the second track is also a very nice deep house track – proving that the guys not only did ONE track right, but also the second – which means there is loads of potential to unfold!

This track came with two remixes of Audiojack:

3. Mat.Joe – Safe Flight (Audiojack’s Closed-Eye Hallucination)

Not bad, Audiojack. This remix made the track a lighter house version, shifting the vocals around, rearranging the vocals and stripping it from the darkerbassline – hard to decide if the original is better or the remix.

4. Mat.Joe – Safe Flight (Audiojack’s Headsdown Rework)
The rework of Mat.Joe’s original is taking the listener on a space trip, giving it a bumpy character – just WOW.

5. Mat.Joe – Stay

Even if I am not a big fan of dominant hi hats and mixing up too many atmospheres – housy, bumpy, heavy basslines, I think this one is a very nice mixture of everything – not my favourite track on the release but rounding it all up to an A-level EP, because it never gets boring.

Opinion:
“Heart To Find“ came out at the right time – a package full of nice originals and remixes that, indeed, does not need many words. I think loads of deep house lovers will have that in stock already, if not – an EP definitely worth purchasing.

For more info: https://www.facebook.com/matjoemusic