Greece's Nikola Gala – and that's Nikola as in Greek for Nicholas, BTW, this isn't some kind of sapphic love odyssey – has had stuff out before on labels like Rekids and Ibadan, but here he makes his full-length debut on Plastic City. And a fine debut it is too.A mixture of "deep house, techy minimalism and big room anthemics," is how the hype sheet describes The Woman I Love. Me, I'd just call it a very solid and highly enjoyable 1hr 12mins of house music. Classic Brit deep of the mid-90s has clearly been an influence – this wouldn't have sounded out of place on Paper back in the day – while the spirit of classic Chi-town also looms large over proceedings, particularly in those big synth b-lines. You can chuck in a little Balearic/proggy dreaminess here and there as well, and the odd more techno-fied beat, but basically straight-up house is the order of the day here.
Some may complain it's a little homogenous, but while it's true there are no tracks that surprise you hugely, I don't think that's a problem. I've never bought into that whole "I didn't want to just make an album of club tracks" thing when so often that means, "so I stuck a really dreary cod ambient thing on the end, oh yeah and there's a sub-Hybird breakbeat on track 6 as well."
It IS perfectly possible to make a perfectly decent album outta nothing but predominantly-instrumental house music. With this just-varied-enough but COHERENT offering, Nikola Gala provides further proof of that fact.
Out: This week
About: Perhaps befitting the slightly old-skool feel, this comes on long-established German label Plastic City – still going strong after nearly 20 years.
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