Fort Ancient Records is the Cincinnati collective of producers, consisting of Homage CVG, Phonopage, Waldo From Cincinnati, Dren AD, and Samuel Steezmore. The group have had a busy 2018, with a couple of releases from Waldo and Homage, along with some short group projects as well. After all that, they come back one last time to spread some holiday cheer with Winter Wonderland.

Winter Wonderland is a fairly straightforward release, with all the producers coming together to put together some downtempo hip hop spins on some holiday classics. Over the course of the EP, you get to hear them chop up songs like “Winter Wonderland,” “Christmas Time Is Here,” and “My Favorite Things,” and give them a chill, funky vibe. It’s all done very tastefully, and they manage to strike a good balance between giving you enough of the original flavor to tap into that nostalgia, while putting just enough spin on things to make things sound fresh. Basically, if you’ve been looking for holiday music that you could bob your head to while slowly sipping on some egg nog, Fort Ancient Records has you covered. They even manage to slip in one less familiar song in “Fireplace,” but it fits in right alongside the rest of the material so nicely, most people won’t even notice until the EP is over anyway.

There’s nothing groundbreaking about Winter Wonderland, but that’s not what you come for with holiday releases like this. This is about adding some freshness to your stable of seasonal favorites, and Fort Ancient gives you just enough new flavor to spice things up while not rocking the boat too much. You’ll want to circle back to this one next December.