- Shall Not Fade celebrates 100 releases with a victory lap from Berlin's queen of house music.
- Cinthie Christl has been in the house hustle for over two decades, but lately she's been approaching house music with the giddiness of a teenager fatefully stumbling upon an 808 in a pawn shop. She's turned out some of the best music of her life in the past two years—from her tender DJ-Kicks ode to the '90s to a recent flirtation with footwork, even remixing Frankie Knuckles and coming out on top.
She continues her hot streak with Bossa And Swing, an EP that marks 100 releases on Bristol juggernaut Shall Not Fade. The whole record is filled with vibrant, retro house, but it's the minimalist closer, "Time To F…" that proves the secret weapon. Rubbery snares and hi-hats bounce across the grid with a syncopated swing, before Christl adds a lightly filtered piano breakdown in the track's first minute. It's a heart-tugging moment that she subtly offsets with surprisingly tough kicks and a wiggling bassline. She treads the line carefully between heads-down groove and hands-in-the-air for the remainder, adding strings here, an extended breakdown there, but always returning to her trademark sense of pared-down funk.