New releases last two weeks: Deep House

Review: German mainstay Johannes Albert returns after a six-year hiatus with his third club album, Private Dancer, and it's worth the wait. As expected, it is a deep dive into refined house music full of maturing production, warm textures, subtle grooves and emotive undertones. The standout title track features longtime collaborator Iron Curtis, and together they craft a hypnotic blend of classic deep house with modern minimalism. Highlights include the gentle grooves and percussion of 'L'Chaim', the steamy nocturnal soul of 'The Night (Moves On' and 'Follow The Strings', which is a more punchy heater. It's the sound of a seasoned producer delivering understated dancefloor gold.

Review: Mike Mitchell is an American drummer from Dallas, Texas, who records as Blaque Dynamite. He plays across jazz, hip-hop and fusion and has worked with greats old and new like Erykah Badu, Herbie Hancock and Kamasi Washington. As a solo artist, he has dropped two albums in the last two years, and Stop Calling Me from 2023 is one that now makes it way to vinyl. It is a wild ride between intense jazz workouts that recall Sun Ra, smoky deep house that taps into Detroit and downbeat explorations like 'I'm Not Trippin'' that are densely layered, textural and infused with a new kind of soul.

Review: Amsterdam-based duo Maarten Smeets and Lars Dales - Dam Swindle - offer us their album, Open, prying ajar our otic tract with 14 quixotic tracks. After years of introspection, Open marks a rupture, as the pair break from their preeminent deep house for an even-deeper-down embrace of the lower tempi, with them now incorporating synthwave, hip-house, and ambient elements. A first taster comes with the smoothly lavished 'Girl' with Faye Meana, while 'Bloom' with Joep Beving develops the theme of self-analysis through well-shovelled deep house chords. Still reining in some four-to-the-floor precepts, Dam Swindle have nonetheless presented their most heartfelt and least harried detour to date.

Review: It's been a long time coming that we should reach the point where German minimal house megamind DJ Koze gets to indulge his own "influences mix", for none other than resident who's-who mix aggregator, DJ-Kicks. Koze's long-loved, minimal house spirituals sound is unmistakable, serving to fill out in widescreen technicolour the best sound achievable across dance spectra; a palatial pan-European palate of crisp, soul-driven sound, crossing into downtempo, bedroom pop and lo-hi-fi crusts. This landmark 50th edition in the 'Kicks series hears Koze blear through said sounds with ease, disparately uniting laid-back hip-hop flips of Madlib through to the raw racecourse force of Berghain techno, then incorporating indie-pop and melancholic outliers further afield, then closing on a fully edited piece of 'Hyuwee' by fellow titan Session Victim. Koze's goal was never to show off his deep knowledge but to craft a mix that anyone could enjoy: in his own words, he sought to recreate a radio show-like experience, emphasisng harmony, not beatmatching.

Review: Phil Evans' second album follows a series of standout EPs on Blankstate, Sensual, Twig, Vigenere and his own Pager Records; the Frankfurt DJ and producer doubles as the Freizeit Records co-founder of Pager, helping set in e-motion the evolution of his local underground electronic scene. With minimality at its core, we hear on E Motinos a reserved and calculated three tracks per vinyl side, preserving optimal, skipless groove quality: 'Eazin', '<3', 'Hm' and 'Deep' prefer a near nonverbal titular expressivity, resisting any reference to the record's tricky, body-jacking movements in any capacity except through body language.

Review: Master drummer and producer Alexander Flood debuts his rhythmic first record on Atjazz, following up the sumptuous first single 'Life Is A Rhythm'. A truly exciting record on foliate green vinyl, this LP packs a production paradox, bringing both boomy bodyweight and a shape-cutting, 2-stepping sense of ease at the same time. With extra layers of perc in the rhythm section, with Brazilian percussionist Aduni on congas and Cuban percussionist Alexander Scull Castillo on bata, it's actually really the dance-flooring production that grabs us here, heard best in the plum chords and erratic pianos of 'Don't Wait For Me', and/or the live bruk ghost dance 'Sidestep'.

Review: French artist Folamour is no stranger to dropping albums despite the format growing ever less important in the modern era of dance music. Movement Therapy is his seventh and a bright love letter to the world that blends house, disco, funk and soul into a euphoric, dreamy journey full of summery joyousness. Following his acclaimed 2024 single 'Pressure Makes Diamonds,' Folamour explores themes of light, connection, and freedom with a catchy pop sheen that captures the uplifting power of human connection and the dancefloor's unifying spirit. Highlights include 'Easy To Love,' a spiritual, ethereal house track featuring Kabusa Oriental Choir, and the hopeful anthem 'Ca Va Aller' with its effortlessly soulful swag.

Review: Yorkshire lad Franky Wah continues to have a large say in the sound of modern club culture with his emotionally charged, high-energy productions and infectious hooks, standout releases and endless touring. He also runs SHEN, of course, a label, events company and clothing brand showcasing his broad creative vision. His latest project, The Revival, Vol. 2, arrives there five years after the acclaimed Vol. 1 that featured the breakout track 'Come Together' and solidified his status among dance music's elite. With this sequel, Franky Wah reaffirms his credentials with a fresh bunch of emotive, vocal-laced and sunshine-rich, drop-filled house anthems for hands-in-the-air fun.

Review: Gerardo Frisina's unmistakable fusion of Latin jazz, funk and soul with contemporary electronics entered a new phase with the announcement of his 'In Sight' series, a two-part project for 2025 set to rescan the multi-genre terrain and project it, rocket-like, into new stratospheres. The Schema Records founder now delivers the second promised instalment in the series, complementing a delicious first volume added to a brilliant swathe of 7"s and LPs, centring on not just his own talents but those of others, mainly those artists of his local Milanese Afro-Cuban jazz, soul and dub ken. Yet seven more finger-pinchers come tethered to adjacent movements in bossa nova, soft-adult cinematics and downtempo here.

Review: The latest Lindstrom album is so good that he appears to have dispensed with the spell-checker for the copy i but it's always such a terrific pleasure to hear new music from the Norse disco titan that even the most uptight proofreader will surely forgive him. Back in the noughties, he and compatriot Prins Thomas flipped the script with their immaculately crafted take on the meta-disco sound. And though the frequency of Lindstrom's output has slowed over time, the quality of his production retains its magnificent allure. Syrius Syntoms begins with a bang i glistening synths, snappy drums and pristine melodics on 'Crkl' i before taking acidic turns via 'Thousand Island Man' and drifting into dreamland on 'Moo)n'. 'These Are a Few of My Favorite Strings' adds a little NY house bump, with evocative keys and low-end groove, while the feel-good arps and bouncy bass of the title track are vintage Lindstrom i full of kitsch sparkle and joyous main room energy. Top marks.

Review:  Liv.e is an LA-based, Dallas-born artist who this summer has a reimagined version of her acclaimed sophomore album Girl In The Half Pearl served up after collaborating with Dallas-based producer Ben Hixon. Together, they transform the original tracks into an energised, feel-good experience that symbolises resilience and recovery after heartbreak. Hixon's innovative approach to each song adds a wholly different perspective on Liv.e's introspective lyrics with genre-blending production traversing, trap, broken beats, deep house and and blissed out grooves all with the vocals unifying the sounds with an otherworldly edge.

Review: Italian DJ and Producer Jo Paciello proves that full length album do very much still have a place int he modern world wit his superb debut on Groove Culture. The title of this one gives you an idea of what to expect - jazzy melodies and sophisticated house beats. He does so with a modern viewpoint but also plenty of reverence for the glory days of jazzy house. Trumpets, saxophones and guitars all feature here and embellish the drums with quality, meaningful layers of melody adn mood. As he merges the past and present, this richly textured work shines with improvisation and timeless deep house warmth.

Review: DJ Sodeyama is a veteran of Japan's underground scene who returns to Sound Of Vast as The People In Fog with a new long player that follows notable outings on cult labels such as Rekids, Trip and more. Here he back on the Tokyo label that's housed all his Fog material and flexing his deep command of house, all infused with his signature warmth. Classy deep house cuts like 'Red Morning' sit next to Chicago-flavoured stompers like 'Jack Out' and disco-filtered bangers like 'Dance To The Air' and he even flips the script with 80s-inspired funk on 'Night Driver' and the Balearic dreamscape 'Sun Moon Lake.' A true trip.

Review: California producer Space Ghost teams up with South Carolina-based singer Teddy Bryant for a sun-soaked ode to late 80s and early 90s soul. The record opens with the silky swing of 'Some Things Last Forever', giving way to lush, G-Funk-laced grooves like 'Majestic Fantasies' and club-focused cuts such as 'Unconditional (Club Mix)'. Bryant's vocals glide over Space Ghost's plush instrumentation, with tracks like 'Cheer Me Up' and 'Ultimate Love' channelling UK street soul and the balladry of classic r&b. 'Shine' and 'Ultimate Love', both featuring Morgan, add extra emotional weight. The pair clearly draw from a shared love of Teddy Riley, Jam & Lewis and DeVante Swing, but there's a lightness here that feels rooted in the present too-music that remembers the past without ever getting stuck in it.

Review: Norm Talley has put together a second volume of his Unity series on his own label Upstairs Asylum. It features his nearest and dearest from Chicago and Detroit, all of whom of course serve up perfectly smoky and stripped back deep house and techno grooves to make you move. Delano Smith's characteristic loops lock you in from the off on 'Big City Nights,' Norm himself pairs dub techno chords with suggestive techno stabs that keep you on edge and Brian Kage's 'Poly-Phonic Phonk' is heady, dreamy, richly melodic house bets listened to in a cosy back room at 4am.

Review: After 32 years promoting a distinctive blend of off-kilter Cologne techno, mind-altering minimalism, ambient pop and trippy tech-house, Kompakt Records has notched up 499 releases. It makes sense, then, that the long-serving German label would be keen to mark release number 500 with something suitably special. They've done just that, offering up a lovingly produced box set that does a fantastic job of celebrating the imprint's journey to date. There are five, differently coloured discs packed with (mostly edited) versions of lesser-known early gems and Kompakt classics, plus a bonus picture disc containing 50 locked grooves, and a 100-page, 10" hardback book telling the label's story to date. It's an incredible product all told, one blessed with a host of electronic household names - The Orb, Laurent Garnier, John Tejada, DJ Koze - and deeper cut, cementing the label's status as a gamechangers and pack leaders.