Michael Gray - Universe

Michael Gray has been making disco-flecked house since before a lot of today’s tech house producers owned their first laptop, and Universe shows the veteran still knows exactly where the groove lives. This leans more classic and filtered than the Toolroom norm, a warm four-to-the-floor pulse with a vocal sample that loops with real soul. The man made “The Weekend” back in 2004, a record that still gets played at weddings and warehouse parties alike, and there’s a through-line of that same feel-good DNA here. It’s less about the drop and more about the steady hypnotic build, the way good disco-house keeps cooking until you realise you’ve been moving for six minutes straight. The bassline has that round, bouncing quality the modern stuff often files down too sharp. A string stab comes in around the three-minute mark and lifts the whole thing into euphoria without ever getting cheesy about it. Proof that experience counts for something in a genre obsessed with the new. Warm, classy and built to last.

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