Review
Genre and Mood
Format:B are known for club-tailored tech house, and Liquid is the exception on their second album: the one track where MusicBrainz credits a singer beside them. It belongs to tech house and house, and its feelings here, groovy, alluring and hypnotic, are this page’s reading rather than a critic’s verdict, because no published review we could verify describes the track in detail.
Song Summary
Liquid is track two of Restless, released on Formatik Records in October 2011, and the album’s credited collaboration: MusicBrainz lists it as Format:B and Fran, and Formatik’s own upload names her in the title. Fran is the German singer of the duo Oliver Koletzki & Fran, whose single Hypnotized came out in 2009. The Original Mix is the album version, 6:43 long, the full-length cut a DJ would play.
Musical Breakdown
No source we found describes Liquid section by section, so we do not invent a structure for it.
Intro
At six and three quarter minutes, the track has the room a club record needs to be mixed in and out; no source describes its opening.
Main Section
The defining element is Fran’s voice, the only featured credit in the album’s tracklist on MusicBrainz; what she sings and how the production sits around her is for the listener to hear.
Outro
Like the opening, the ending is not described by any source; listen to how the track hands over to the rest of the album.
Concepts in Focus
A <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist credit marks a guest on someone else’s record. In tech house, where most tracks are instrumental, a featured singer changes the balance: the producers’ groove becomes the setting for a voice. Format:B chose Fran, already known for the songs she made with Oliver Koletzki, whose own music is in Oliver Koletzki – Through the Darkness.
The words Original Mix only make sense next to a remix. Restless was followed in 2012 by a series of remix 12-inches on Formatik; on the first, Super Flu combined Liquid with the album’s opener Desire into a single track. The original is the producers’ own version, the one the remixes answer.
The track also belongs to club culture. Format:B met at the SAE Institute in Berlin, became resident DJs at the club Watergate and built a label as a platform for themselves and friends; Restless was made to be played by DJs like them.
Artistic Context
Format:B are Franciskus Sell, from Erfurt, and Jakob Hildenbrand, from Berlin. They released 12-inches on Highgrade from 2005, then on Stil vor Talent and Opossum, and founded Formatik Records in late 2009. Restless was their second album, after Steam Circuit in 2008, and Formatik’s first full-length, containing only unreleased productions and issued digitally, on CD and as a double LP.
Impact and Reception
We found no chart entry for Liquid and no review of it that is still online. Format:B’s wider fame came later with Format:B – Chunky (Radio Edit). Liquid is here as the other side of the duo, the one that makes room for a voice. Give it its full length.
