The Mole reaches for the sky

The Mole reaches for the sky

The Mole [Wagon Repair]

17 June, 2008 | 8.34AM

• Written by: Ben Raven
• Filed under: Music Recommendations: cobblestone jazz, modern deep left quartet, the mole, wagon repair

It might have taken a prodding from friends to happen, but at last one of Canada’s finest deep house and techno aficionados drops an album that’s so now it hurts.

Some artists languish their entire careers waiting in the wings of greatness, enveloped in the stardom of those with better PR, bigger agents or craftier label ties.

The Mole, we’re told, has been happily burrowed amongst the stardom of better-known Canadian underground house and techno stars like Mathew Jonson and his Cobblestone Jazz band or the once Windsor-based Canadian of sorts, Richie Hawtin, for some time.

With ‘As High As The Sky’, his label tells us, “after years of encouragement he’s finally caved in” and recorded a debut album that shoves him finally into a deserving spotlight.

If you first came across him via his first Wagon Repair EP ‘Conversations With The Past’, or his collaboration on Kompakt with his friend and former band member Mathew Jonson (‘Dirt Road and a Boat From Soundwave’) you’d be forgiven for thinking the Mole has just crawled into contention.

In fact he’s been holed up deep within the Canadian underground house scene for a lot longer than that.

A member of the Modern Deep Left Quartet, the band that preceded Cobblestone Jazz, he’s been knitted into the Wagon Repair circle of artists since well before the label’s inception.

Now after much alleged cajoling into existence his long player is proving to be one of the year’s best so far if not it’s most timeless.

Fusing jazzy percussion with a rolling disco bassline and sampled vocals in places, it’s a record that, synthesizers permitting, could have been made in New York in 1976 or Chicago in the mid-1990s.

It begins with ‘Intro’ and ‘Still In My Corner’ – eerie melodies and sloping downtempo beats sidestep vocals in the distance before dropping into the tense deep disco-fied house of ‘Ain’t The Way Its Supposed To Be.’

Tracks like ‘Hey Girl (I Feel SO Good)’ marry the filter house techniques favoured by 1990s house legends like DJ Sneak or labels like Roulé with the gritty basslines of sixties and seventies funk.

‘Baby You’re The One’, filter techno club hit that’s been slaying clubs via the hands of DJs like Ricardo Villalobos and Josh Wink, ups the tempo and allows another perspective on the Mole’s musical make up.

Tunes like ‘Like The Way’ or ‘When It Tastes So Good’ dip the tempo without providing the ubiquitous ‘chill out moments’ many album artists feel pushed into delivering when trying to make a record with a life beyond the dancefloor.

Instead, they ooze mysteriousness and a deep, downtempo house sexiness that makes this an album as at ease on your Ipod journeys to work as it is as a ‘Back to Mine’ soundtrack.

As the underground bends further and further towards deep house, ‘As High As The Sky’ couldn’t be any more the sound of now if it tried.

If there’s a fault it’s perhaps there is no undiscovered musical territory to be found within its confines.

But as a snapshot of the creative mind of a DJ with impeccable taste and appreciation of dance music’s finest musical moments, it’s a telling sign that the Mole’s time to bask in the sun has finally come.

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