Martha Pinel – Real Rio

Berlin-based DJ, party promoter and sometime style icon Martha Pinel is better known in her home city of Rio de Janeiro, where she’s famed for running (and being resident DJ at) her Assembleia parties. Here she brings a flavour of that event to Toy Tonics via a colourful and club-ready debut EP. She giddily blurs the boundaries between nu-disco, deep house and ‘Vogue’-era Madonna on opener ‘Espirito de Estada’, before joining forces with Gabto on the organ-heavy turn-of-the-90s party house vibes of ‘Assim’. Over on side two, Pinel goes cowbell crazy on the house piano-laden electrofunk joy of ‘Uber Moto’ – perhaps the EPs most infectious and startling cut. Friend of Toy Tonics Lipelis remixes that track, adding Latin percussion hits and metallic motifs (as well as snatches of her vocal) to a driving dub disco groove.