Sven The Builder

Having spent half my life in marketing I should know that purchase decisions change people’s perception, including my own. In the case of Sven Weisemann I definitely did get a slightly skewed impression of what he does simply because of the stuff that I bought (and the stuff that I didn’t buy).

So, to me the Weisemann brand was primarily located over in the Dub Techno section. Loved his “Alfa” remixes for Freund der Familie, his great treatment of El Choop’s “Insane Sends” and the deeper parts of his “Separate Paths” EP on Delsin a few years ago.

As you might have already guessed – the “Limerence ToolZ” clearly don’t support this categorization. And that’s a good thing as it made me take a trip through Weisemann’s discography outside of my little 8000rec bubble. It definitely proved that his love for Detroit isn’t restricted to the deep end of the pool, and that he has no problems crossing over from Techno to House.

And even if this EP incorporates most of the different facets of Weisemann’s music it is a little bit of a surprise. Compared to lots of their predecessors, the six tracks have a compact format, none of them reaching the six minute mark. This will primarily be due to slight surprise number two – they are tools. Functional, concise, to the point.

To be clear – that’s absolutely nothing to moan about. It’s just that Weisemann isn’t necessarily known to be throwing tools around like Bob The Builder. But as there’s plenty of positive energy here and even a good dose of fun, this change of brief seems to have been a welcome challenge for him. Sven The Builder. Who would have thought.

Sometimes it feels like Weisemann wants to tell us that the oh-so-cringy Deep/Chicago/French House days weren’t so bad after all. After going back to his earlier work I even checked out some Phil Weeks and Bryan Jones. Don’t tell anyone.

The parallels are there, though. What I liked about that section of house was the simple combination of really funky banging beats, a few nice chords and pads that would either soften things down or pump up the drive, and one or the other vocal sample – and that’s that. Five six minutes, good fun, nothing more and nothing less.

What elevates this to a clearly higher level is the simple fact that Weisemann is a really crafty and talented producer that doesn’t just create tools but also knows how to use them. In the end we get exactly what this new sub-label of Mojuba was created for – music that has the one and only task of making people dance.

And they will. Sven The Builder has the tools, and you can use this EP for any part of the night. You can warm things up with the Deep House of “△”, raise the energy with the funky Detroit House of “▲▲△”, burn the roof and make them smile with “▶▷” and then slip into the after hour with “▶▶▷”. Saves a lot of space in your DJ bag.

Which brings us to the third surprise of this EP. It seems as if Weisemann put all of the energy of his longer pieces into these five minute tools, compressing them to punchier and feistier tracks that you would have expected. Sven The Builder is Sven The Puncher as well. I like.

Release for review:
SVEN WEISEMANN – LIMERENCE TOOLZ VOL. 1 – FREKOBA – FREKOBA 1

Buy the vinyl version on Decks: Click
Buy the digital version on Bandcamp: Click
If the vinyl is sold out, get it on Discogs: Click