There’s not really much you can say about Maurice Fulton. He makes brilliantly quirky, soulful, funky and extremely advanced music, which is fantastic to dance to, sit down to, stand up to, and then go dancing again to. He was a member of the Basement Boys, Baltimore’s finest in garage music production. You can listen through his catalog and be quite stunned by the inventiveness, funkyness and sense of humor that fills his tracks and you can pick up your copy of Crystal Waters’ “100% Pure Love” and find his name in the credits as a drum programmer.

If you don’t have a copy of “100% Pure Love” what are the kids going to vogue and sashay to? Moody techno can only do so much. However, if you are partial to a bit of moody techno — and aren’t we all? – then you can browse through Maurice’s work and find something atmospheric and abstract, which will be more atmosphericer and abstracter than anything atmospheric and abstract that you keep with the more atmospheric and abstract records in the atmospheric and abstract section of your collection. You may have to go back to the middle and around again to find the particular cuts that tickle yer fancy. Maurice rules from on high as a DJ too. So damned good! I liked the Alderon record so much that I wrote about it in the abstract below (cue gong sounds).

Maurice Fulton Presents Alderon
Pleasure Me
Realtime Records/US/12
Basement Boy Maurice takes off his garage hat momentarily and tries some groovy technoid cuts of varying tempos and styles. “Pleasure Me” is shuffling, drifting ambience with a tribal feel while “Sitting In My Room” is a downtempo hip hop affair. Flip it over and “Roam” takes a trip down Derrick May lane, “My Mind” is a jazzy, uptempo breakbeat thing and “The Sun Sets” is minimal, beautiful house. Nice to see a respected east coast house producer experimenting with the genre. Keep it coming, Mo. Chris Orr