From Rivera's Groove Box #145: Ajukaja & Maria Minerva - All The Heart Breaks

Such a nice song, isn't it? Careless and quirky house-pop with all the jazz they can blend inside it. Ajukajas's and Maria's first attempt to cook vaudeville-disco. 

From Rivera's Groove Box #144: Legowelt - Beach Oceano

Legowelt is probably one of the most talented electronic music composers out there at the moment. He's got a home full of synths and machinery to make music. He's a total geek, in a good way - he's fascinated by old computers, UFOs and science-fiction, he used to make music on a audio tracker program, for heavens sake! He's been a member of the Unit Moebius crew. No doubt he has left his footsteps in the European techno scene and continues to break the frontiers. He is a professional musician. And that's why you can categorize his productions 50/50 into two sections - 1) hastily made studio jams and 2) amazing groundbreaking electronic music. The problem with people who make a living with music is that they have the need to pump tracks and songs out all the time, and so it can result in a lot of tracks lacking in quality. Legowelt is always quality, but many of his tracks feel the same - quick studio jams with many synths. Same synth lines, patterns... but not this song here, this, I feel, is one of his best works in the electronic dance music area! Bonus points for sounding like a japanese N64 video game music piece.

From Rivera's Groove Box #143: Mutual Attraction - Lost Tape

Can you believe that this wonderful track is the first (and so far the only) officially released track by this artist? This track is supersweet. It's like an instrumental jazz track, but entirely an electronic piece. I checked the artists instagram page, and from the pictures I saw loads of different analog gear. Very nice! We need tracks like this in times when the deep house genre is in a danger of being hijacked by commercial appealing dance music. Which is unfortunately going on right now. This is a reminder - don't let bad music win.

From Rivera's Groove Box #142: Palace - Touch Me

Wow, what is this? A minimal lo-fi garage groove track? Pretty much sums it up. A very rough and minimal production with only a repetitive drum loop, vocal samples and few out of place piano chords. But somehow it just works. I couldn't make a track so minimal and simple, it's just not my thing - I'd stuff more drums and sounds to the track. Coming from the so called 'oddball' house label 'Unknown To The Unknown' - probably one of my favorite house labels at the moment.