To kick-start the FINA Campaign we literally hunted high and low to find an artist and sound that we felt would represent us and give a statement of intent. What we didn’t expect was for this search to take us south of the equator and into to the deep southern hemisphere.  This is not the first place that you would expect to hear warm, deep underground house but this is exactly what you get with the Melbourne based Mic Newman. And thinking about it, it doesn’t get warmer or deeper than Melbourne does it? Mic is a young producer who we believe is destined for greatness.  The young Australian producer has already had a string of underground smashes on labels such as murmur, Tsuba, Dirt Crew, Freerange, and now for FINA Records.

The intriguingly named ‘Live East, Die Young’ EP (Mic riffing on his time spent living in London) sees what Mic doing what he does best and demonstrates why his future is so bright. On ‘Die Young’, the tougher A-side, Mic keeps the beats solid, and the groove tight and hypnotic, while the smooth chord stabs get right under your skin. Prolonged foot tapping ensues.

On the flip side, ‘Live East’,  Mic takes it a little deeper with ever so subtle disco touches; the vocal sample asks ‘what your name is’ and to ‘take off your jacket’ as if to welcome you to a very messy after hours on this MCDE-esque low-slung house groove.

On remix duty, the on-form Jacques Renault and Marcos Cabral aka Runaway, lift the track out of the south hemisphere and take it in a north easterly direction all the way to the Caribbean - adding plenty of steel drums and pads on their interpretation of ‘Live East’.