Notes from the Underground: Jacques Greene, Applebottom, Gianni Lee, Gunge, Waifs & Strays, Temple Invisible, Oscuro

Welcome to Notes from the Underground, THUMP's weekly premiere feature dedicated to shining a light on underground sonics from around the world. Every week, we'll start at the surface and dig deeper into the underground with each track. This week, we've got everything from the deepest house to a techno band to a clusterfuck of acid house, bmore club, and trap (all in one song), and you can check them all out at this one-stop shop.  Have a listen and take notes:

New AUS Music signee Escape's original for the pseudo-eponymous single "Just Escape" was deep enough to begin with, clocking in around 105bpm and nestled in reverb as Daudi Matsiko's vocals croon over washes of strummed tones. Montreal-based Lucky Me mastermind Jacques Greene took the track even further, all the way to the deep end of the pool. His version sounds like listening to the bossier end of a Solomun set, all muted tones and Close Encounters synths, except entirely submerged underwater. With a 7:28 runtime, if the remix hasn't lulled you into a loopy hypnosis by the time the broken beat final lap kicks in, you might want to consult a physician.

Escape is on Facebook // SoundCloud 
Jacques Greene is on Facebook // SoundCloud // Twitter

Precocious Bristolian talent Applebottom (Keep your Flo-Rida references to yourself, please) cheated early promise with releases on MadTech and Zed Bias' BIASONIC imprints, and his first outing for the-now-Grammy-winning label Black Butter, titled "Top Knott Wut," is a minimalist-ish house tune with a warping bassline and wonky atmospherics that'll have Claude VonStroke and the rest of the Dirtybird posse shimmying in an envious frustration all the way from San Francisco.

Applebottom is on Facebook // SoundCloud // Twitter 

This remix manages to rumble through acid house, baltimore club, and some tightly would trap before falling away and doing it all again. It's the kind of creative bonanza that comes together when two talented solo producers whip out their junk in the studio like "This is what I got." Lee, the Philly-raised, LA-based polymath just linked up with Jersey's Thread Collective alongside new inductee KJ Dreayshawn (That's Kreayshawn for the non-dyslexic) and runs a fashion label Babylon Collective. He does not, as far as we know, sell molly.

Gianni Lee is on Facebook // SoundCloud // Twitter
Hi$to is on Facebook // Soundcloud

You can always trust a Slugabed-approved act to make you feel weird. If PC Music are the audio manifestation of the golden age of dial-up internet, then Gunge is what happens when a virus moves in and starts making weird sex on your desktop. Yeah, we know the kind of websites you went to when your parents weren't around. If Y2K had actually come to fruition, the Mad Maxian desert colonies that sprung up in server warehouses during the aftermath would have gotten down to tunes like this as they performed digital sacrifices on your tamagotchis.

Gunge is on Facebook // SoundCloud

Temple Invisible hails from Romania, and makes a brand of dark, icy, electronica that feels like someone took the industrial tremor of Depeche Mode and the trip-hop sprinklings of Portishead, and made them spend the night locked together in a pitch black dungeon. The group's production "Sudden Acts" from their March 10th  'Enter_' release manages to thrust itself into an even more submerged expanse via a tightly constructed remix from techno-pusher Liar. Beware: there's machine growling and you may get scared.

Temple Invisible is on Faceboook // SoundCloud // Twitter
Liar is on Facebook // SoundCloud // Twitter

The first thing you'll notice when you listen to this track is that it sounds nothing like the 1980s classic we all know and have recovered from a breakup too. "But THUMP," you plead. "We love the original… Give us our chorus back!" Steady on, youth. "Sexual Healing" never quite recovered from its over-remixing at the hands of tropical house producers, and we're happy to tell you that this "remix" sounds nothing like the original. Bristol-based Waifs & Strays, along with friends PBR Streetgang, have transformed it so completely that it shares only a single vocal sample with the original. We applaud their production chops and resistance to taking the easy route.

Hey Bonobo, looks like you've got some competition. This tune, titled "The Same,"  is gold - soft melodies bely the subtle drive of the rhyythm and the glitch-soul vocals atop render this newcomer's first release an arresting listen. It's no fluke - Oscuro's album Can't Stop Now is all on this level. At the time of writing, the Cambridge-based producer has 97 followers on SoundCloud and 57 fans on Facebook. Congratulations, you have reached the underground singularity. There is no deeper you can go. Turn around, do not stop until you reach Tiêsto, and then begin again. We'll have something more for you by that point.

Oscuro is on SoundCloud // Twitter