Berlin based bar and club Paloma have been putting out music via their offshoot label of the same name since 2020. Branching out their musical activities from the live to the recorded. With previous guests including the likes of DJ Fett Burger, Telephones and Finn Johannsen, their taste and reach is broad and deep. It’s that approach to dance music that is reflected precisely in this quartet of new releases, the numerically named 009.1 - 4.

Tracks are present from many of the artists that have been associated with the venue over the years. Conceptually, the four EPs are aimed at what they see as the four phases of a typical night on the tiles in old town Berlin. While that may sound intimidating or just a little over analytical, taken together these 19 tracks make total sense together in that context.

009.1 is the ‘getting ready’ set. This means the skippy, jazz-spoken word feels of Glasgow’s Rebecca Vasment doing ‘Flowers’ along with the swirling broken house of Al Zanders and ‘The Professional’ amongst the five tracks here.

Next up it’s 009.2, setting the night in motion. It’s the early part of proceedings, the spot is filling up and the dance is full of pregnant promise of what’s to come. The tougher house sound of Lavan’s ‘Undeniable’ gives just that via looped vocal stabs and a fierce enough keys motif. It’s simple but effective. More classic sounding dance music is present and correct from New Day and U, both firing with their looping garage pieces. Khadija’s gorgeous ‘Lake’ rounds things out with a sweet female vocal cut.

009.3 ups the stakes to what the Paloma crew call ‘Escalation’. The warm up is done, it’s time for the acid lines and high hats. Mr Redley provides the goods with the bleepy techno of ‘Bisimoto’s Acid’, a sparing 303 warble bubbles up nicely as the track progresses. Space is the place with Behrang Mohammadi’s ‘Do Nothing Wrong, Do Everything Right’ a driving piece of dance music with the lightest of touches. Then it’s the closing dramatics of Appleblim’s ‘Melancholy Vectors’. All offbeat sound effects and twisted glitches.

Last up it’s stage four - releasing the tension. Four, more downbeat, slices of music for the encroaching dawn hours. Jay Simon’s filthy horn-laden breakbeat ‘Intro (Jay’s Rumpshaker Edit)’ fits the bill perfectly. Dancing is still required but the pace is a little more relaxed - it’s not quite time to go yet. The breakbeat loops continue with Rebecca B and ‘Country Gz’ before Soela and Module One provide a touch back to the house sound with ‘Let’s Spend Some Time Outside’. The closer is that (the) Pal Joey, doing ‘Someday’, a different direction from his signature sound, coming across like some lost hip hop anthem to lead the floor into a final act of togetherness.

Some nights, the planets align and take in all four stages, sometimes they don’t and it’s a numbers game. 009.1-4 absolutely add up, doing the maths to produce a product of equal parts variation and quality.