Jamie L – (What We Saw) In The Burg

A vinyl-only release here from the mighty Paper Recordings, coming courtesy of one Jamie L, who they describe as "a mysterious figure of unknown origin and history who fits into the Moodymann/Theo Parrish school of heavy future disco".

And yeah, "heavy future disco" is as good a description of (What We Saw) In The Burg as any. It's an unhurried, lo-slung and somewhat druggy, out-there kinda groove, with densely layered production driven by warping bottom-end synths, muted handclaps and barely-there samples of party noise. The Havana Candy Mix goes deeper yet more spangly, like space disco on downers, while finally the Cottam Mix is an epic, evolving pass that fuses late-night deep house vibes and soulful wails with fierce, techy percussion.

I think it's the Havana Candy Mix that does it best for me but you've got to hand it to Paper, really. Half the deep house styles that feature on this blog they pretty much invented back in the mid-90s (well, along with Pagan, Nuphonic, Toko and a few others); now the world and his brother are doing it, they're doing something slightly different, pushing us forward once more.

Out: This week

About: Paper live here, here and here (website, Facebook, Soundcloud).

Sasse – You Took My Love

If you like your deep house a little more on the leftfield/experimental side, this latest from My Favorite Robot should suit.

In its Original form, You Took My Love is one of the hardest records to classify/describe I've heard all week. 'Leftfield deep house' kinda works but there are influences in there as well from acid house and garage, all topped off with a vocal that sits somewhere between an indie growl and Sly Stone. It's interesting stuff, certainly, but it's the remixes that work better for me.

There's a straight-up instrumental, plus refixes from James What and from Sasse himself. Mr What's rub takes us into more easily quantifiable deep/tech house territory, with the vocal pared right back, but the standout here is Sasse's own Detroit Mix, which foregrounds a plinky-plonky, xylophone-ish synth riff that's not a million miles from Nightwriters' Let The Music Use You…

Out: This week

About: You can find My Favorite Robot at their own website or on Facebook.

ALBUM Quincy Jointz – Lime Sorbet II

The second compilation from German DJ Quincy Jointz, in the spirit of his former radio show of the same name.

Informed by funk, hip-hop, Afrobeat, boogaloo, acid jazz and 60s Hammond mod grooves, the album apparently "spotlights some of the coolest acts in the funky nu-boogie scene"… well, I wouldn't know about scenes, but artists include Ursula 1000, Stereo 77, DJ Kid Stretch, jazz.k.lippa, Zamali, DJ Enne and many more. And if that's not much help… think Gilles P at Dingwalls, Deee-Lite circa Dewdrops In The Garden, late-period Beasties, Across The Tracks and the kind of dusty funk-breaks LA's Cold Busted label do so well – all mashed together at some mojito-fuelled pool party and laced liberally with familiar samples – and you're kind of in the right ballpark.

An eclectic, party-hearty 16-track ride coming in mixed and unmixed versions, just in time for those late summer barbecues.

Out: Now (but only since last week)

About: This comes on Orlando, Florida-based Eighth Dimension, who've put out stuff from Q-Burns Abstract Message in the past… as well as a bunch of other people whose names don't begin with Q!

Trademark – Exosphere EP

If you like your deep house music on the experimental/leftfield/slo-mo side then you'll be well aware of Intelligent Audio by now… here's their latest, courtesy of Tony 'Forces Of Nature' Reeves and Loki, who together make up Trademark.

"Four classy, deep and jazzy tech-house cuts" is how the hype sheet describes this one. Not sure 'jazzy' applies here so much TBH but I wouldn't argue with the rest! Glass is yer straight-up lush late night bizniss, The Good Earth starts out all uber-deep and dubby then gets busier and techier as it goes on, Inner Motion is a laidback Balearic groove and finally Origin Of Matter is a bit more abstract and soundscape-y, but still with a solid 4/4 kick.

A cert for the more cerebrally-inclined househeads out there.

Out: This week

About: You can find Intelligent Audio on Soundcloud, on Facebook or at their own website.

Joe Europe – Idiot Box EP

And there's MORE deep, atmospheric bizniss here courtesy of Falk Recordings, who can always be relied on for some very deep house vibes on a more leftfield tip.

And so it is here. Idiot Box itself tops off a mellow, dreamy, almost Balearic groove with what sound like extended chunks of movie dialogue (some guy telling some girl how perfect she is… just thought I should mention that for indentification purposes). Into The Woods goes down the dubby route with some gentle acid thrown in for good measure, and then finally there's Space Head, which is a little more overtly dancefloor and uptempo, though even then you'd still be looking at warm-up/afterhours play on specialist floors only.

Into The Woods stands out for me but generally speaking, if "very deep house vibes on a more leftfield tip" sounds like they might appeal, then this will for sure.

Out: This week

About: I've just realised that Falk Recordings are based just down the road from TIWWD – in Bath, to be precise. So, erm, hello neighbours! Anyway, you can find them on Soundcloud or at their own website, or on Facebook.

ALBUM Robert Lamm & John Van Eps – Robert Lamm Songs: The JVE Remixes

Sorry reviews have been a bit thin on the ground this week… been stupid busy. But I'm gonna be spending a significant portion of the next couple of days sitting on trains, so we should be able to catch up a bit. In the meantime, here's something of a curveball of an album… it's been out a couple of weeks now but I promised! And besides, you can't listen to tech-house all day, every day you know…

If the name Robert Lamm doesn't mean anything to you, he's the singer and main songwriter from Chicago, and what this album consists of is Chicago classics from their late 60s/early 70s days as a jazz-rock-fusion outfit (ie, before they went all AOR later on), remixed by contemporary producer John Van Eps into…well, therein lies the rub. I'm not sure exactly how you'd describe the fruits of JVE's remixing labours. But "Latin-leaning, jazz-flecked downtempo grooves with a lounge bent," is the closest I could get, just off the top of my head.

Not being any kind of Chicago expert, it's the refixes of well-known tracks like 25 Or 6 To 4 and Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? that are appealing most to me. But taken as whole, this is definitely an interesting listen, even if I'll confess to being a little outside the TIWWD comfort zone trying to write about it. You can see tracks here slotting easily into Sunday chill-out sets and the like as well, so a job well done, I'd say.

About: If your leftfield sonic fancy has been tickled, you can find out more (and buy the album) at the Robert Lamm website. Oh yeah, and it's brought to you by the Blue Infinity label.

PS Some good news: one of the things I've been busy with this week, has been putting the framework in place for a TIWWD revamp, redesign and relaunch! More details soon but it's all tremendously exciting. No, really.

Ksoze – Wobble Jazz

Sorry there were no blog reviews yesterday… spent most of the day climbing a download mountain and by the time I finished that, I'd kinda lost the will to do much else. But anyway here we are back once again…

And we'll start with a nice easy one. Easy cos there's only the two mixes; easy because it's pretty 'easy' in the sense of being laidback, mellow, easy on the ear etc; and easy because, well, if you know the kind of dusty, downtempo vibes that Cold Busted trade in, then there's not a lot that I can tell you about Wobble Jazz that the title doesn't! Except that the remix comes from Vitamin D, but to be honest even that doesn't do huge amounts different.

But don't let either the lack of mix variety or my shoddy, half-arsed review put you off… if it's lazy, Sunday afternoon grooves you're after, this is gonna delight.

Out: Wednesday (June 20)

About: This comes, as I just suggested, on Denver's Cold Busted. Find 'em at their blog, on Facebook or on Soundcloud.

Jay Bliss - The Art Of Doing Nothing EP

Only the second release here from a new label headed up by Alex 'Hypercolour' Jones, Ste Roberts and Dave 'MN2S' Elkabas. And if you're looking for stylistic clues in that last sentence, then Hypercolour's forward-thinking, leftfield house and techno rather than MN2S's uplifting vocal house are what you need to be thinking about.

Opener Doing Nothing is the most 'traditional' cut on offer, a fairly chunky deep house floor-groover with bubblin' sub-aquatic synths, a meaty bass riff and a simple three-note piano hook. X then takes us further into experimental pastures with its lo-fi crackles, skittish rhythms and sci-fi synth noises. The latter's accompanied by a 14-minute Petre Inspirescu mix that may appeal to fans of Plastikman, Aphex Twin et al, though I have to say it's a glitch too far for me personally… but digital bonus cut Atonement lets us end on a high, as Bliss relaxes the tempo and gets his dubwise skank on.

Out: This week

About: The new label from the Hypercolour/Glass Table/MN2S/1Trax boys is called Initials and can be found on Facebook and Soundcloud… you can also read an interview with them at Greg Fenton's Magazine Sixty

Matteo Floris - Someone Is Rockin' EP

The experimental meets the traditional here, on an EP from 3am packing some VERY different mixes.

In the experimental/leftfield corner we have two originals from Floris himself. If you like your beats fractured, your rhythms chopped and stuttered and your headspace fucked with, then you should dig both Someone Is Rocking and Stolen Party, both of which also come complete with chopped-up snatches of Cockney vocal. Think of the kind of deep house that might appeal to fans of Domu, 4hero or Luke Vibert…

But in the traditional corner, we have two remixes that, I must admit, are more up TIWWD's disco dolly street. In Michael Scott's hands, Stolen Party becomes a bass-led deep houser with slight overtones of 80s groove/boogie. But the real star of the show is label boss Al Bradley, who shows the young 'uns how it's done on his Rock Your Body Dub of Someone Is Rockin'. Layered, echoing 4/4s, rising synth stabs, a rumbling b-line and sparingly-used sax squiggles join the tiniest of vocal snips here to create a proper deep house delight that'd be just as at home on the dancefloor or the sofa.

With cuts to suit a range of tastes, then, this is worth checking all round. But Al's Dub is the killer for me.

Out: This week

About: You can find 3am Recordings on Facebook and Soundcloud.

Nitin - Latenightlife Remixed

Not sure if I got sent the original EP of this when it was out early last year, and I'm not at home right now so can't check or (assuming I did) compare these new mixes to the old ones*. But that doesn't really matter… all you need to know is, this is great.

On this remixed version of the EP, you get two mixes apiece of Blink Twice and The Nine In One. Anthony Collins' remix of the former is a mellow deep house take with lots of gentle jazz piano, while Nitin himself supplies a Re-Edit on which he's collaborated with Colombian group Sexteto Tabala. Together, they deliver a version laced with hypnotic tribal percussion and slightly more use of the female vocal, which sounds to me very much like a sample from Coldcut & Lisa Stansfield's People Hold On, though I guess it could not be.

Moving on to The Nine In One, this features another sampled vocal and comes with rubs from Subb-An and Brett Johnson. Brett's 4 Steppers Only Remix features, er, steppy beats and the kind of fat n' squelchy bottom end you associate with broken beat; it's quality 'late night' stuff for sure, but if you need something a little more driving then the Subb-An Remix – a prog-tinged deep house throbber – should see you right.

Between them, then, the four mixes explore different musical territories, but they all do so very successfully, making this an EP lovers of more leftfield deep house need to be checking for sure.

Out: This week

About: This is number 45 from James Teej & co's Toronto-based My Favorite Robot. Nitin himself, it's also worth mentioning, is co-owner of the excellent No19 Music, who've also featured on this blog before now.

*Actually I guess I could probably find them on YouTube or Beatport of something but, y'know… I'm lazy.

ALBUM Mojo Rising – Seven Wonders

Here's an album from a label I don't think have featured on here before, Denver's Cold Busted.

Cold Busted specialise (from what I've heard to date, anyway) in leftfield electronica, dusty Shadow-esque lo-fi hip-hop and other such esoteric thrills, but to me this album is a bit more accessible than some of their stuff, and all the better for it. They're calling it "a worldly and texture palette of funk, dub and electronic music", which kinda works; think a more party-oriented Ninja Tune and you're somewhere in the ballpark of the general vibe here.

Opener Stonehenge samples both The Specials (A Message To You Rudy, to be precise) and James Brown, The Lighthouse is a lounge-tastic shuffler with a xylophone (!) to the fore, The Tomb is a thoughtful, slightly melancholic downtempo trip, Catacombs is a slab of hip hop-inflected downtempo funk, Hanging Gardens is a bit like The Orb doing Italo and… well, there's more but you get the idea.

Quirky, experimental genre-mashing's all very well, but it often just isn't that much FUN. Seven Wonders, on the other hand, is. There's a reason not a lot of downtempo/experimental albums make it onto TIWWD… the fact this one has should tell you all you need to know.

Oh yeah… and loving that cover, too!

Out: This week

About: Find out more about Cold Busted by hitting up their Facebook page, radio station or blog.