Alex Preston, Danny Rhys - What's Up Man

What’s Up Man is exactly the kind of title that tells you this is not a track interested in deep meaning, and thank god for that some days. Alex Preston and Danny Rhys have made a piece of pure peak-time tech house, the sort of record that exists to work a dark room at 1am and does exactly that with zero pretension. The whole thing is built around a chopped vocal asking the title question over and over, a hook so simple it is almost confrontational, the kind that will either lodge in your skull or drive you up a wall by the second listen. For me it lodged. The bassline is a classic rolling tech-house groove, that mechanical forward churn the genre runs on, and the pair are smart enough to barely touch it, trusting the groove to do the hypnotising for them. The percussion is where the detail hides, little hi-hat flourishes and a clap with just enough reverb to feel like a real room around it. There is a filter sweep into the back half that does the whole work of a breakdown without killing the momentum, and that is the moment that sold me. This is a DJ tool and entirely proud of it, the kind of track someone keeps in the bag for when a floor needs a jolt. What it will do is move a room at the right hour, and some nights that is the only thing you actually want from a record.

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