Back catalogue: Deep House

Review: Get yourself geared up for festival season with some fierce party starters certified with the Glitterbox stamp. Melvo Baptiste leads the charge with 'Sweat', a sizzling disco house stomper with Dames Brown giving the biggest diva energy on her show-stopping vocal. Lovebirds bring unbridled joy on the Philly string swoon and slinky b-line funk of 'Burn It Down', while Art Of Tones & Inaya Day keep it peak time on the sassy strutter 'Give My Love'. Young Pulse & Fleur De Mur complete the set with 'Smooth Sweet Talker', another bright and bold vocal cut par excellence.

Review: The Plastik People label has been going along nicely for its first few releases, with label head Marc Cotterell stepping up and coming correct last time out. Now he calls upon various artists with Dave Charlesworth taking care of the a-side of Nice Ripe Cuts. He offers two super slick garage cuts that cannot fail to make their mark on the club and it's no different on the flipside except D Lux & Y No combine first for '25 Miles' and then S R offers the irresistible 'Pressure.' An essential 12" for anyone looking to bring some fresh garage flavours.

Review: Demi Riquisimo's 'A Lifetime On The Hips' sublabel returns to make it a hat-trick of releases for 2023 with the impressive 'Body Move' V/A, featuring eclectic club cuts from Dreamrdreamr, SY, Papa Nugs, Elfenberg, Absolute. & Ysanne. Dreamdreamr's emotive 'Zone 4 Booty Call' kicks off the A-side; it's a track that effortlessly fuses elements of deep house, trance, and r&'b, setting the the tone perfectly for an EP not bound by the borders of any genre. The titular 'Body Move' by SY is up next; a no-nonsense house chugger with flourishes of Italian 90s progressive and acid - a perfect modern interpretation of a foundational strand of club music. The A-side wraps up with one of 2023's most exciting prospects Papa Nugs and the vocoder infused, percussive, twisted jam 'Loosey Goosey'. The flip picks up right where the A-side left off with Elfenberg's 'Solarplexus', a cosmic, evolving and psychedelic interpretation of house. After, UK mainstay Absolute offers a 'Devastating Rhythm', a peak time techno floor filler that sounds like a Frankenstein mix of seminal imprints Dance Mania & D'jax-Up-Beats' output - proper gear. Finally, drawing the curtain on the 'Body Move' V/A is Ysanne's 'Tisno Tango'; a slightly more introspective cut, but with more than enough groove to make you dance, a perfect closer.

Review: Satya deals in a certain brand of deep house that is dreamy and organic. It's perfect for the cosier dancefloors out there, the more heady crowds who don't need big drops and samples to get their musical thrills. If you are one of those people then get your ears around this superb new various artists 12". YokoO & Zone+ offer one of the standouts with 'Once I Had It"]' which pairs subtly swirling pads with cuddly deep drum loops. Hermanez has his kickstand with a little more weight but they are no less hypnotic, while Moya (US) brings some enchanting strings and yawning vocals to 'Meliora' and Electricano keeps it nice and warm and liquid with the supple loops of 'Universal Language.'

Review: Four cruel and bewitching dances are conjured on this split EP from MoBlack Records, the chart-topping Afro house label whose music has found itself on the well-used USBs of the likes of Dixon, Black Coffee and Ame. Immediately, one can hear the incipient threads of kwaito and amapiano on this shared vinyl slab, as traditional verbed-out Afro-style vocals hear neat processing along modern EDM production. Expository dreamers like 'Rahamah' segue calmly into headier and doomier cuts like 'Amanga' and 'O Pa Mi Titi Deabe'. All are replete with rare African call-and-response vocal samples lifted from evidently obscure sources.

Review: The GLBDOM label is on a roll and we don't want it to stop. As was the last with the seance EP, this one is a various artists' affair pressed on nice heavy vinyl to match the heavy sounds. Ollie Rant opens with the quirky melodic leads and sleazy deep house loops of 'Aaaww Yeh' before Manuold brings some Chicago bump and grind on 'Roots.' The hats and drums are perfectly raw and lead you 'Deeper Underground' and into the jacked-up hands of Yann Polewka. Last of all comes some cheeky garage swing and swagger courtesy of DAN T's' nice dry 'Hold Me'.

Review: Fresh Sounds #000 is a new and unique series, limited and numbered to 150 examples thanks to the efforts of its parent company Ribo Cochlee. For the very first edition of the series, a mockley crew of newcomers come to the fore, be they DJ Moar, Disco Flegrei or Holdtight. Centring on woozy jazzdance and disco with an airily produced bent, the highlights on this one have to be Flegrei's 'Titamesque', which basks in a kind of sexy sophistry procured by the heady combination of live drums and a (we think) muted bass clarinet, and Yured Jones' 'Far Away', which breaks from the genre prescription for a more cinematic breakdown.

Review: Following the release of the (rather good) multi-artist EP, Balance, Satya is back to serving up solo showcases - in this case a third label outing from sometime All Day I Dream contributor YokoO. He begins in typically warm and woozy fashion, wrapping rising and falling analogue synth sounds, cut-up vocal snippets and tech-tinged electronics around a deep-tech groove ('When I Wait Next To You'), before reaching for more minimalistic beats, trippy noises and wobbly, UKG style sub-bass on 'I Look at You'. 'I Want More of You', which boasts selected vocal snippets from a late-80s classic, is pleasingly dubby, dreamy and ultra-deep - the EP's most potent moment in our book. German duo Superlounge's accompanying remix is a little breezier and looser, despite the presence of locked-in tech-house beats.

Review: youANDme has always been an important cog in the wheel of underground house and techno and his recent PPPPP was another fine project that has also spawned plenty of equally brilliant remixes. This is a second collection of them and it kicks off with the Polish master of perfect loop techno, Head High aka Shed. His bulky, barreling drums and big percussive loops come with plenty of bounce and raved up vocals. After that come Ian Pooley's dub, and Johannes Albert's deep house trip. Sasha, Roger Sanchez and Laurent Garnier have already been banging these so now it's your turn.

Review: Martin Muller originally dropped PPPPP as a 12" on Rhythm Cult back in 2016, as youANDme was hitting a level of omnipresence in the tech house sphere. The track was always destined to be a hit, making great use of an iconic Loletta Holloway sample and strapping it to a more modern kind of club cut. Now that record is being revisited with this remix package, featuring one of the original 'Diva' mixes backed up by versions from certified legends Ian Pooley, Cinthie and Yotam Avni. With these kinds of ingredients, each version is a surefire crowdpleaser which ever particular slant you're craving, with enough production heft to move a big room as much as a basement club.

Review: Youandme has been around and turning out the dubbed-out sounds for seemingly decades. He lands now on the equally long-standing Rhythm Cult label with a limited and splattered new 12" that delves into the depths of minimal tech house. It features lead cut 'PPPPP' - a smooth, frictionless masterclass in hypnotic sound designs and feathery grooves with occult synth motifs. Berlin's Ian Pooley then offers a moody basement house mix, Cinthie gets into some flailing and dusty breakbeat action and Yotam Avni remixes with a more melodic sound laden with lush bells.

Review: The French deep house label D3 Elements is now a decade old and to mark the occasion it has assembled a superb three part EP series featuring plenty of talents both new and old. The second EP kick off with some Japanese stylings from Koizumi Yukiko and his piano laced bongo workout '526'. Taelue sets off on a deep and heavy bassline pulse that will make floors march and Nemanja Krstic's 'Aquae Sulis' brings some jazzy chord work and bubbling funk bass for a nice heartfelt vibe. Gnork shuts down with a skittish, stripped back broken beat that makes this another diverse offering.