Early Works CD

Joining the ranks of Anthony Shake Shakir, Rick Wade and Daniel Wang's Balihu imprint in being honoured with a Rush Hour retrospective is Detroit native and current New Zealand resident Recloose. As the title would suggest, this rounds up early Recloose material after Matt Chicoine was introduced to the electronic music cognoscenti via Carl Craig's Planet E imprint with some unreleased heat interspersed. Any apprehension over the tracks on this rather lovely packaged CD sounding dated is blown away with the bombastic opening track "Get There Tonight" which featured on the 1999 Spelunking EP for Carl Craig's revered imprint. What really impresses is Chicoine's obvious talent for merging house and techno with strands of preceding musical forms; be it jazz ("First Off") or dub ("Absence Of One"). The real highlight here is amidst the unreleased material with "Antares", a flip towards loose filtered house that's made special by the introduction of a delightfully soulful vocal harmony sampled and cut to fit the gaps.