With his first full studio album in nine years, Play It Loud!, due for release in February, Marco Carola offers a taste of the forthcoming LP with the Groove Catcher EP. Encapsulating Carola’s approach to techno in both sound and title, Groove Catcher is the Naples producer at his best, with a rolling bassline punctuated by a percussion pattern that teases out the funk of the track in Carola’s trademark style: pacey and direct, but with enough bounce and fluidity to fully snare the occupants of the dancefloor within its grip and make them do its bidding. Fellow album cut, The Method, which appears on the vinyl format only, is similarly insistent whilst lighter in tone - if Groove Catcher is best employed at the peak of a club set, then The Method is its daytime terrace equivalent. Leading the EP will be the rework of Groove Catcher by Martin Buttrich, with the German producer lending the considerable talents that have led to releases on Poker Flat and Cocoon Recordings - as well as his recruitment behind the mixing desk for Timo Maas and Loco Dice - to a pair of remixes that transform the original into a different beast entirely. The Catcher Remix mutates Groove Catcher into something monstrous and intimidating, bringing a different intensity to the track and injecting it with a heightened sense of danger, whilst the Groove Remix (available on the digital format only) skews off into another direction altogether, changing up the rhythms with stuttering tribal drum patterns that you would more commonly associate with the burgeoning post-garage London house scene, all the while maintaining the flow and sensations of the original version.