Optimo Music’s latest offering is from Glaswegian resident, Hammer, with his debut release on the label. The first two tracks on the EP are heavy hitting, house stompers, but the final number, the Special Disco Remix of ‘Stripes’, is the one with the vocals more prominent and suitably sugar-coated to match the Disco mood - a real sweet-sounding Disco belter!

Childhood friends with the Bicep boys having grown up together in Belfast, Hammer, aka Rory Hamilton, has been messing about with them on Ableton since he was fifteen but said earlier on this year that ‘we’ve definitely stepped it up a notch over the last three years, making as much music as we can together’. Last year his well received collaboration with Bicep, EP entitled ‘Dahlia’, was a breakthrough moment and this year has been much more of the same having joined forces once again with the duo but for AUS Music as part of their milestone tenth year compilation AUS100; their first collaborative release not on the Feel My Bicep label. Since then Rory has had a track go out on Huntley + Palmers and now he gives us these three, as it says in the bio, ‘dancefloor activators’.

3.7/5

Buy: Vinyl

Words by Ben C