The point at which ‘electro’ finally ate itself was probably those mercifully brief couple of months in 2007 where ‘maximal’ became an accepted and propagated sub-genre. In amidst all the clanging synths, sirens, ceaseless build-ups and choppy vocals I started having flashbacks to 1999 and me, at the tender age of 14, being blown away by the awesomeness of vocal trance. Basking in the glory of Alice Deejay’s ‘Better Off Alone’ on my Ministry of Sound Trance Nation 2 album, I wasn’t to know that everybody else was taking the exact same song as their cue to abandon the good ship trance for more mature, sensible waters. Which is how we got progressive house: an ocean of boredom. Shudder. But I digress. Quite a lot.

Maximal = the premature musical ejaculation of an over-stimulated 14 year old. But it wasn’t all bad. For one thing, we got the Chewy Chocolate Cookies out of it. And while their music undeniably skews towards the more full on end of the spectrum, they seem to have a greater control over their tracks than most exponents of the ‘maximal’ or ‘banger’ sound. Restraint in excess. Or somesuch. In good blog house fashion, they first cropped up last year with remixes of Justice (’Genesis’ and ‘The Party’) and SMD (’Hotdog’), which were blogged by absolutely fucking everybody (except us for some reason…), and with good cause. All 3 were hectic, unstoppable party beasts that actually sounded somewhat more original and varied than the ceaseless parade of Ed Banger knock-offs that had been otherwise clogging up the blogosphere. Since then they’ve been prolific remixers, suitably brutalising tunes by Digitalism, DJ Mehdi, The Whip, Robyn and many more.

But CCC released their first volume of self-produced music, the ‘Pepites’ EP, back in February (I know, that is SO early 2008) and it is, as you’d expect, pretty fucking manic. I’ve spoken before about the difficulty of remixers turning their hand to solo work (which sounds like a masturbatory pun…), but with this EP, CCC have managed to distill the essence of their sound and create music that is still recognisably CCC, but wholly original. And awesome. It’s always reassuring to see the products of blog hype fulfill on their promise. Maybe this system does have some merit…

Now for some tasty samples. ‘Time’ is blisteringly hard fare, with deep techno kicks, hoover synths and brief, unexpected melodic breaks, while the Mixhell remix of CCC’s ‘Profondo Rosso’ turns the off-kilter space pop of the original into a relentless electro funker.

Chewy Chocolate Cookies - Time [removed on request - exclusive replacement content on its way]

Chewy Chocolate Cookies - Profondo Rosso (Mixhell Remix)

The EP is out now on Ekler’o’shocK Records, and can be picked up through Beatport, the iTunes Store and DJ Download. Get onto it.

-luke