Glenn Astro - Turquoise Tortoise (2018)

Next up on Apollo is a stunning double header LP between crate-digger, DJ and producer Glenn Astro and Cologne DJ and Producer Hodini aka Hulk Hodn.

Boasting out electronic explorations and jazz patterns, ‘Turquoise Tortoise‘ is a masterful, unique concotion that infuses Future Soul experiments into Detroit influenced House, Broken Beat and even technoid up tempo percussions rounded up with classic boom bap sounds.

Conceived as a loose limbed creative experiment,’Turquoise Tortoise’ was not written and recorded in the classical sense of a collaboration as Astro explains:
“We had the idea of doing an album together for quite a while, but with one of us living in Cologne and the other one in Berlin we never really had the chance to spend enough time together in one place and go to the studio together properly.”

Unsatisfied with simply sending files back and forth via the net, they struck upon the idea to produce tracks individually, bringing them together finally on one album.

“Although we didn’t make the music together it still was really important to us to have a motif and to keep keep it cohesive.” Astro adds.

This was achieved by exchanging key elements/ FX taken from each of the ‘completed’ song and weaving them in to each of the productions as little call backs or references to each other, the smudged and trippy vibe perfectly complimenting such an approach.

Hodini’s experience working with vocalists proved invaluable, as Turquoise Tortoise is the first time that Glenn has worked on a record with such a portfolio of talented featured artists – Ajnascent contributes his dulcet tones to ‘Found!’ and ‘Viktor And The Quasar’ to mesmerising effect. Longtime Astro pal Max Graef shows up to play bass on the vibey b-boy workout ‘Malaysian Moped’ alongside a carefree vocal contribution by knowsum. A Uk flavour come courtesy via the rap/toasting talents of Peckham’s MC Pinty on the beatific ‘Beautiful Music’.

The album title ‘Turquoise Tortoise’ can be seen as a metaphor,” Astro smiles “The turtle or tortoise is often used to describe processes that move forward at a slow pace. This was often the case for the album, to bring everything together the way we wanted, so we thought it symbolizes this really well.”