Recent Elite Force remixer and pourer of the Hairy Sambuca, Kid Blue puts down a solid if unspectacular house pounder. Featuring funk horn gusts (that would have you believe the track will be far funkier than it actually is), descending acid and trance twitches and a general tech flex, it’s a fairly stern, tunnel-vision grind-out, here to do a job with an authority asking for respect rather than advertising for friends. Allowing for too much breakdown time, both at the start and halfway through (and half-dropping the beats three-quarters in as well), does Way Back few favours, given the unyielding, unemotional nature of the beats throughout.
Ultimate Orange – with a Britney Spears cameo purring breathily over the beats in a shrewd instalment of jiggery-pokery – packs lead-weight bassline force, and knotted electro riffs and synth strokes momentarily lightening the tone, meeting at the breaks/tech house fence that Kid Blue enjoys hopping over from both sides. Again, it might need dropping at the right time of the evening/morning to really have its muscular way with the dancefloor. Through a set of headphones, this trundles along until it’s done; in one ear, out the other, and that’s that. In full flight, beads of sweat are likely to come as standard.
Kid Blue is obviously about getting to the point, knowing that a strategic session placement is all this two-tracker needs to take care of itself. His offerings here make a safe pair of hands – technically proficient, instructed to maintain set flow – without really making themselves available for a title-checking rush of the booth.