Rob Cook & Hapkido – LEP033

A three-tracker from the secretive Lepento… can see why they'd want to keep this one a bit on the downlow though, cos what we have here are three cheeky reworks of three very well-known vocals. Well, two, anyway…

Forget Me is a surprisingly not-too-cheesy disco-houser with hip-house trimmings… 'surprisingly' given that it's a makeover of Patrice Rushen's Forget Me Nots, which if asked I'd have said shouldn't work, but it kinda does. Next up, What You Need pulls off a similar trick with Cheryl Lynn's To Be Real (well, a similar disco-house trick, but without the rap element this time). And then finally there's Treat You Right, which reworks the vocal from… er… oh I dunno, some R&B thing.

A more uptempo affair, this latter reminds me a little bit of all the R&B boots that came to dominate the Brummie bassline scene back in the mid-00s… as such I've got mixed feelings about it, it kinda makes me smile but it IS a bit cheesy, to be fair.

The other two, though, should serve you well as party-starters on any floor that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Out: This week

About: You can find Lepento on Soundcloud.

Jason Wolfe – Basement Funk EP

"Big jackin' disco vibes," is how the one-line email that accompanied the latest from the mysterious Lepento Records describes this one. Which kinda works… though "house like the 00s never happened" would do it even better, cos this is an EP that'll have anyone who ever wore a shiny shirt, loafers or those stack-heeled black buckskin boots onto the floor at Vague, Moneypennys, Holy City Zoo or Love To Be grinning in nostalgic delight.

So: retro peaktime screamers ahoy! It's Time is big n' brassy filter disco in the 1995 Hustler's Convention/Kadoc/etc vein, while Move On drops what sounds like a cheeky bite from Once In A Lifetime before moving into a very passable impression of a 90s house remix of First Choice. But the pick for me is Basement Funk itself, a no less big but slightly less brash disco-houser that makes sterling use of the B Beat Girls "all right" vocal sample made famous by Size 9's I'm Ready, among others.

Warning: Playing the Outcross record below will make you look dead cool n' hip n' that. Playing this record won't. But it will make people dance, and speaking as a veteran of the handbag and nu-NRG era myself, I rather like it. So there.

Out: This week

About: You can find Lepento via Soundcloud.

Yogi & Steve K – Rhythm Turns Me On

It's been a long day… busy with lots of different things and quite knackered now, so just the one review for you tonight. But it's an absolute cracker, I promise!

See how I said last week that I'd kind of fallen out of love with 'soulful house' these past few years? Well, that's true… a large part of the reason that being that the music's just gotten so polite and wishy-washy. Lacking in dancefloor oomph… lacking bollocks, if you will. So what a JOY it is to come across a soulful house record in 2012 that – gasp! – actually has dancefloor energy in spades… which this certainly does. It's also got a lyric that expresses my feelings about house music very nicely – "this music's sent from up above, let it rain down with love".

So yeah… this record is great, basically, and I'd strongly recommend you acquaint yourself with its charms at the earliest possible opportunity.

Mix-wise, well… there are seven to choose from, including rubs from Husky, JD73 and label co-boss (er, I thought he was anyway, though he's described on the hype sheet as "our office cleaner and wannabe DJ"!) Craig Stewart – but I'm not going into them all one-by-one. Partly for the same reasons you're only getting one review, and partly because while all the mixes are very playable, and while between them they cover various shades from "more mellow and musical" to "pumped-up and sporting loads of ace space disco stabs", the standout BY FAR comes from relevant newcomers dEEP DJOE & Pedro Mazz.

The Portuguese twosome give us two mixes but it's their Funky Mix that's the killer – check out its rollicking, parping Hammonds and disagree with me. I dares ya.

Out: This week


About: This comes on Universe Media, find them online here. If you read the 'about' bit, it seems the label's solely Martina Lancaster's baby so maybe I had it wrong before or maybe things have changed… anyway more importantly I should also mention that Yogi and Husky should of course be familiar to you from their Random Soul guise.

PJC - Gna Get High/That Road

Well it's Monday again… a nuisance, I find, Mondays. So let's lift all our drooping spirits by getting straight in the groove with some straight-up jackin' house music.

A simple two-track affair, this one. Gna Get High owes a heavy debt to classic NYC-style house, with a little bit of a Joey Negro-esque disco touch on top… 'simple but effective', I think is the phrase here. On the flip, meanwhile, That Road is a slightly darker n' drummier affair with lots of filter action – so we're in New York again, this time gettin' down to Junior circa 1995.

Like I said, just some straight-up jackin' house to get the blood pumping.

Out: This week

About: This is on Quadraphonic Recordings, who I don't know HUGE amounts about to be honest but who can be found on MySpace and Facebook if you want to do some digging... and oh, look! In the Facebook photos there's a review I wrote of a previous release, where I said they were Spanish. So I guess they must be. I don't just make this shit up, you know. Well, not stuff like that, anyway.

Paul Anthony & Mike Gillenwater - You Can't Hide From Your Blow

And while we're talking about Mr Gillenwater, also out this week is this collab with Paul Anthony.

I'm not even gonna tell you what Sneak/Pendergrass classic it's a take on, cos I'm sure you've sussed that already. And there's just the one mix as well, so all I'm gonna say is that it's actually not a bad remake at all… and that there's a little more of the Teddy P original in there than there was in the Sneak version, too.

A playable update for sure.

Out: This week. I just said that.

About: This is on Paul Anthony's own label, Chicken Fried Disco. It's only their third release so show some love peeps!

Mike Gillenwater - Full Tilt EP

Yesterday we had a techno label doing techno, and a techno label doing disco-house. So tonight, by way of restoring the natural order of things, let's start with a disco-house label doing disco-house: to wit, the latest from Chicago's Bid Muzik.

Now, as a rule I'd say you know what you're getting with Bid Muzik. Their particular blend of disco-house, while distinctly their own sound, is rarely all that groundbreaking or anything, but it's always got plenty of energy and stays just about the right side of the cheese line. And yeah… that tells you about all you need to know about Full Tilt itself, or about the two mixes of Fat City (Original and Sean Biddle), or the two mixes of Tell You Why (Original and Vince Fiero), though I should point out that the latter two tracks go a little heavier on the soul vibes than a lot of this kinda tackle, which is cool.

So the usual 'unpretentious but fun' disco-house fodder from Bid it is then… until we get to When You Love Me. Cos this track… this track… THIS TRACK is the nuts. I don't know if it's the way Gillenwater opts for less of the bright synths and just lets the filtered loop shine through on its own merits… whether it's because it's more heavily sample-based or because it's an altogether rawer-sounding cut than the rest. But yeah.

The rest of this EP is pretty good… When You Love Me is freakin' excellent.

Out: This week

About: You can find Bid Muzik, run of course by Sean Biddle, on Facebook and Soundcloud.

Ant Brooks - Starlight

An uncomplicated slab of disco house here, courtesy of a label you might not expect… Umek's 1605 Music Therapy.

I say 'uncomplicated' because there's nothing we haven't heard before here, really. But it's relatively cheese-free (insofar as disco house can ever be), and you do get two mixes to choose from, Ray RosenfelD's Remix being a bit tuffer and vaguely Sneak-ified number with some 90s Real 2 Reel-type synth sounds thrown in, while the Original is more your straight-up filtered loop + vocal affair.

Not an essential purchase, perhaps, but it's all good clean fun… and it's also interesting to see 1605 heading in this different direction.

Out: This week

About: 1605 Music Therapy are of course better known for their driving, East European techno and tough tech-house… but then you knew that

Hamza - Groove Guru EP

Another label I've been feeling a lot lately are Unrivaled Music, and here's yet another example of why, as Hamza – who I'm guessing, though it doesn't explicitly say so, is the same Hamza who runs India's leading house label Wind Horse Records – serves up three tracks of quality house/deep house for your dancing pleasure.

Groove Guru itself is a party-starting slab of funky-fuelled disco house done properly… with a fat-ass bassline and a vocodered vocal (I'm a sucker for vocoders), this would almost be worthy of the great Mr Lee himself circa Universe Of Love. And that's praise indeed coming from me!

Funky Chuski treads a similarly funk/disco-inspired path, but this time with the addition of some serious jazz-funk saxuality… and then, just to prove our boy Hamza's no one-trick pony, Giving It Up is an altogether deeper dancefloor nugget, with a heavy jazz influence. Oh yeah, and the female half-sung, half-spoken – and then chopped n' sampled – vocal reminds me, for some reason, of Thandie Newton in the film Gridlock'd.

Incidentally, if you've never seen Gridlock'd (with Tupac, Tim Roth and the aforesaid Ms Newton), you really should… EXCELLENT film. But I digress. What we're here to talk about is this record and, yeah, it's yet another bomb from Unrivaled.

Out: This week.

About: The currently on-fire Unrivaled Music is of course part of Essex's Endemic stable

Rambla Boys - Valderambla EP

Named in honour of Colombian footballer Carlos Valderrama, this marks the very first release from a collective of DJs, VJs and party people based in Venice, Italy.

Disco-house is the vibe overall but across the EP, various flavas are on offer. The original of Valderrambla itself is a pumping, hi-octane affair in the manner of labels such as Bid Muzik or Nocturnal; in Scuola Furano's hands, though, it becomes a much more slow-grinding, sleazy number with a postively rude bassline and some bleepy old-skool house synths, while Australia's Ashton takes the BPM down further still and adds some nu-disco polish.

You also get Cocomero, a Moroder/Italo-style workout, plus Moranzani, a euphoric piano track in the classic Italian house style. Whatever style of disco-infused house you're after, then, this is well worth checking.

Out: For a couple of weeks, I believe, but we'll break the rules seeing as they're new…

About: You can find out all you need to know about Rambla Boys from their website, Facebook and Soundcloud pages. They can already count Faze Action, Serge Santiago and Hard Ton among their supporters, I'm told, so I'd suggest you take a look!

Oh yeah, and this is on Mozzarella Recordings, who are based in Bologna and can also be found on Facebook.

Green Street - In Effect

As we all know, there's something of a disco-house revival going on right now, and Steve Mac and co's Nocturnal Recordings continue to keep up their end of the bargain with this latest from Green Street.

Thankfully leaning towards the more credible, Sneak-ish side of disco-house, as opposed tothe cheesy French touch/Hed Kandi end of the spectrum, In Effect in its Original form consists of the usual filtered disco loops plus a male voice listing those urban centres that are “in effect”. Miami, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Chicago and New York all are, apparently, though strangely Chelmsford seems to have been missed off the list. Ah well.

The M80 Dub takes things a little deeper and drops the vox, while the Hijack Re-Rub adds some silly Dutch-style synth wibbles for the kiddies. The track doesn't really need it to these ears but then I'm not 17, am I?

Overall TIWWD verdict: not essential, but playable for sure.

Out: This week

About: The best place to find Nocturnal would seem to be on Facebook but they're also on MySpace, naturally

S.K.A.M - I See You EP

From the Ostracon review below which isn't really club music at all, let's take a massive genre leap once more and have a look at this latest EP from Denmark's What Happens, which is the kind of thing that just screams 'play me to a dancefloor full of people immediately'.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, What Happens have been on a monster of a roll lately and this three-tracker from Russia's S.K.A.M is no exception. Floating On Air is an uptempo rump-shaker that recalls early UK garage circa 1995/6, when Todd was God; I See You itself rolls and rolls and builds relentlessly in a tech-disco fashion, while Walking On Sunshine is a brass-toting disco-house stomper that fits in with the current resurgence of interest in such vibes nicely.

It's Floating On Air that's the killer for me but all three tracks are eminently playable, making this yet another winner from What Happens.

Out: This week

About: Find What Happens online at MySpace, Facebook or their own website. And here's a website for label boss and general Danish house music mover/shaker Tim Andresen, too.

Jangatha - When I'm With You

From tech-house to dubstep and now to uptempo disco vibes… you can't accuse TIWWD of not mixing it up a bit, can you?

There's been no shortage of disco-house revival bizness coming from Sean Biddle’s Bid Muzik label this past couple of years, and a lot of it's been pretty good. But When I’m With You is in a different league altogether. This is disco-house done as it should be… it doesn’t sound like some horrible cheesy Hed Kandi ‘funky house’ cut. It doesn't even sound like late 90s filter disco… instead, it sounds like nothing so much as those classic Morales, Negro or Farley+Heller mixes you used to get on Janet Jackson or Paula Abdul 12s back in the early 90s.

Coming from this unashamed former handbagger, that's praise indeed. I can't even be bothered going into the finer nuances of the remixes from Lennox and Steve Navarro… all you need to know is, When I’m With You is ace. Come on, let’s boogie.

Out: This week

About: Find the Chicago-based Bid Muzik on Soundcloud and Facebook.

Belocca - Wired On Love EP

Right then, rant over, silly cowbell-adding websites duly propped, and we can get back in that good house music groove again.

The 'stupidly busy' bit still applies though so we'll get going with this one, cos it's nice and easy: three tracks of quality house music courtesy of Hungary's Belocca, who's had stuff out on the big-hitting likes of Cr2, Nervous and Toolroom. B'Wired is an insistent jacking discofied groove that teases with the most minute of vocal snips, I Need You works more pounding kicks and some garage-y filtered organ sounds and Lemme Love U starts out as a more shuffly, percussive kinda thing before going on full-on disco house.

Any or all of 'em will rock any decent house floor, being accessible enough for mass appeal, yet not so cheesy as to alienate the more discerning heads. Nice touch.

Out: This week

About: This comes atcha on Wired, but I can't seem to find a website for 'em so here's Belocca's MySpace instead. Oh no, hang on... here's the Wired Soundcloud page as well.

Affani - Back To The Old School

A two-track EP here from Affani, who I THOUGHT was a new name to me, although he’s apparently had stuff out previously on the likes of Twisted Frequency (which means I must have heard some of it) and Catch 22.

Nocturnal Recordings is known for its filtered goodtime disco-house vibes from the likes of Sean Biddle, and so it is here, but Affani, on this EP at least, takes a slightly tuffer, more jacking approach. The title track features a cut-up, looping disco riff, while Don’t Stop is a simple rolling-type affair; both should easily find favour with fans of Sneak, Carter et al, although both are more set-building tools than peaktime standouts in their own right. To these ears, anyway... but make your own mind up, obviously!

Out: This week

About: Nocturnal Recordings is run by Steve Mac and chums, and you can find out more from the label's MySpace.

Coeur D'Amour – Wild Lovin' EP

If I tell you that this is on Stardust Records, a new label set up by Philadelphia's DJ EQ, who not so long since had his own artist album out on Sean Biddle's Bid Muzik, then you should have some idea what to expect. Yep, this is 'back to the late-’90s' disco-house all the way…

That being the case, you could hardly call the Wild Lovin' EP the month's most groundbreaking release – in fact, let's be honest, it's 'archetypal', which is another way of saying 'formulaic', and it does have a slight whiff of cheese about it in parts.

BUT there's really rank, stinking cheese, and there's quite pleasant cheese. And if you cast your mind back to the late-90s, I think you'll find some of us were out in clubland having a blast while most of today's Shoreditch hipsters and too-cool-for school blognoscenti were still sitting around in their Postman Pat pyjamas playing on their GameBoys and listening to their Aqua CD. So fuck 'em. The five tracks here thankfully eschew the kind of electro snarls or horrible Dutch squeals that befoul much similar material these days, so they're all right in TIWWD's books… file this alongside the likes of Duck Sauce as 'good clean dancefloor fun'.

Out: This week

About: Stardust Records, as stated above, is a new label run by DJ EQ. Can't seem to find a website but here they are on Soundcloud