News / deep house
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1 min read
Fish Go Deep & Tracey K X Shy FX - The Cure & The Cause
Read more . . . →A friend sent me this at 1am with just the link and no message, which is usually how the good ones arrive. For a second I thought it was the 2006 original, and then Shy FX’s drums kicked in and it turned into something else. “The Cure & The Cause” is one of the great deep house records, Fish Go Deep and Tracey K’s slow-burn heater that has soundtracked a thousand sunrise sets, and letting a jungle veteran loose on it could have gone badly. It didn’t. Shy FX keeps Tracey K’s vocal front and centre, the ache fully intact,...
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1 min read
LEYO & Thierry Ganz - Stamina (Extended Mix)
Read more . . . →You already know if a Defected extended mix is for you, and Stamina is a good one. LEYO and Thierry Ganz turn in a piano-and-bassline house cut built for the long haul, which the seven-minute runtime makes clear from the jump. This is proper daytime-terrace house: a rolling groove, a vocal chopped into a mantra, and a piano riff that shows up at the halfway mark and lifts the whole thing into the sky. Defected have a formula and it’s a good formula, and Stamina hits every beat of it without feeling lazy about it. The bassline has a lovely...
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1 min read
Moby, Jacob Lusk, BLOND:ISH, Kiko Franco - Natural Blues (TECIE) (Live from Way Out West)
Read more . . . →I did not expect a 1999 Moby track to be the thing that got me this week, and yet here we are. “Natural Blues” was already one of the great uses of a sample in dance music (that keening Vera Hall field recording, “Oh Lordy, trouble so hard,” lifted off an Alan Lomax tape and dropped into a house track) and this live reworking finds a way to make it hit new. Jacob Lusk from Gabriels takes the vocal that was originally a sample and sings it live, and a gospel-trained voice turns the sorrow in it from a ghostly...
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1 min read
Klangkarussell & Tailor - Drifter
Read more . . . →I heard this coming out of a café speaker before I knew what it was and stood in the doorway until the barista clocked me. “Drifter” is Klangkarussell doing the thing that made “Sonnentanz” lodge in a million heads over a decade ago: melancholy dressed up as a dancefloor track, a melody that reads happy and sad at the exact same time depending on how your week is going. Tailor’s vocal is understated to the point of a whisper, more texture than lyric, and it lets the bassline and that gently loping house groove carry the emotional weight. There’s a...
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1 min read
Moby, Jacob Lusk, BLOND:ISH, Kiko Franco - Natural Blues (TECIE)
Read more . . . →There’s a moment about two thirds through where the beat strips back to almost nothing and Jacob Lusk’s voice just hangs there, and it gave me chills the first time. “Natural Blues” is one of the most recognizable samples in electronic music, that mournful Vera Hall field recording Moby built his 1999 version around, and reworking it is a genuinely risky move because the original is sacred to a lot of people. This version earns the risk. BLOND:ISH and Kiko Franco rebuild it as a proper Defected-style house record, four-to-the-floor and warm and made for a sunrise set, while Jacob...
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1 min read
Last Light on the Terrace
Read more . . . →You’ve got an hour before the sun’s gone and these three records are exactly the right length. Summer’s best music is the last thing playing before the night takes over. 1. Sasha - Hollow Sun 25 Seven minutes and the acid line only fully arrives at the halfway mark. The rest is buildup. Not the big-room kind, the kind where you realize you’ve been holding your breath and the track hasn’t even started pushing yet. This is the 200th release on Sasha’s Last Night On Earth label. Two hundred records, and he saved the acid for the anniversary. 2. Gabriel...
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1 min read
Route 94 - 4Get The Girl (Mellizos Remix)
Read more . . . →Heard this out of a passing car with the windows down and clocked the piano before I clocked the artist. “4Get The Girl” is Route 94, the guy responsible for “My Love,” that inescapable 2014 deep-house number, and the Mellizos remix drags it somewhere sweatier and more direct. It’s built on a vocal loop and a piano stab that’s pure UK house lineage, the kind of chord progression that’s been putting hands in the air since the early nineties. Mellizos keep the groove rolling and resist over-producing it. The drums stay dry and punchy, the bass stays simple, and the...
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1 min read
John Alto - Waiting For
Read more . . . →John Alto’s “Waiting For” slid right into my rotation without asking for permission. It’s deep, melodic house that sits in that late-night, top-down-drive pocket, all warm chords and a bassline you feel more than hear. It never reaches for a huge festival drop, and that restraint is the whole reason it works; the track is about the groove staying locked while little details drift in and out around it. There’s a vocal sample buried low in the mix, pitched and looped until the words dissolve into pure texture, and it’s the glue holding everything together. The kick is soft and...
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1 min read
Calcou - 24 (Live from Leipzig)
Read more . . . →If you’ve written deep house off as background music for hotel lobbies, Calcou would like a word. “24,” recorded live in Leipzig, is the sound of the genre with a proper pulse and a full room in front of it. You can genuinely hear the space on this recording — the low end has that slightly loose, physical quality that studio versions tend to sand right off, and there’s a faint wash of crowd sitting underneath the whole thing that tells you this actually happened, that people were present and moving while it did. The groove is deep and patient,...
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1 min read
Feiertag, Jody Wisternoff & James Grant - Nomad
Read more . . . →Anjunadeep in full sunset mode, and I’m not remotely mad about it. “Nomad” pairs Feiertag’s live-band warmth with the Wisternoff and Grant production polish, and the result is deep house that actually breathes — real-sounding drums, a bassline with genuine give in it, none of that rigid grid stiffness that plagues the genre. It unfolds slowly, the way the best Anjunadeep tracks always do, layering in elements until around 3:30 when the groove hits full stride and you realize you’ve been nodding along without even noticing you started. Jody Wisternoff has been doing this for literally decades and his fingerprints...
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