Starting a record label makes you realise how important the presentation of your music is. You can have strong tracks with the requisite visceral propensity, the perfect synth and that all important [e]motion, but if you don’t house it and present it in a manner befitting of it, you just kinda cheapen it. It’s a hard enough pill to swallow that the general consensus just wants a heavily compressed digital file instead of a lavishly packaged physical product, so going that extra mile in the current climate really starts to mean something (to some people). That’s why when someone offers you copies of a vinyl release to give away it’s kind of a big deal…

The Brighton based Hit & Hope label have reached their 6th milestone with the vinyl release of Elkat & Moleskin’s ‘Hurt’ and what the Leeds duo showcase on it is a knack for measurement. What they’re doing isn’t new, by now its a recognisable formula: there’s string samples, highly reverbed vocals, clipped percussion and a gliding lead line that wiggles its way through the middle of the mix, but moreso than anything it just all feels thoughtfully placed. It never really does too much either, something that the included remixes from Hum & Buzz co-owner Optimum and Donga & Blake (the pair behind the Well Rounded label) go a fair way in adjusting. If the original kind of slouches into its own pace Optimum flips it and does that tumbling 808 conga and swaggering, elongated synth worm thing he does so well. And where he pours his personality and musical outlook into it;Donga & Blake appropriate a little bit of that Blawan style roughened kick thump, layering it over the strung samples of the original mix. By pumping it up with more of a direct to the floor boogie bounce they neatly juxtapose the toughness of the drum line.

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To win one of two copies of the release simply email us the answer to the following question by Monday 12th March…

Q: The first release on Hit & Hope was by whom?

A) Naive Machine
B) Pixelord
C) Klic

Winners will be notified by email.