Summer Sessions: House

To close out the summer, we have two bumper house playlists, full of instant classics and soulful melodies. The house session comes in two flavours: the peak playlist deals in shiny, fist-pumping bangers, while the deep playlist is dustier, more analog, packed with after-hours sounds from some of the scene's top producers. The deep playlist is a more typical White Noise list, but we aim to please, and there are countless scorchers on each list to keep the sun shining out of your speakers well into the colder months.

Make sure to check out all of our summer playlist series, and to follow White Noise on Facebook and Twitter!

Summer Sessions:

Classic House

Hip Hop
Chill

Bass
Funk and Soul

Peak House Playlist

Tracklist:

Krystal Klear - From The Start

First Choice - Love Thang (Genius of Time Re-edit)

DJ T. - City Life (Maceo Plex Remix)

Scuba - Everywhere

Sophie - Nothing More To Say (Dub)

C.R.S.T - Monster Munch

FCL - Let's Go

Capracara - Ronin

Bicep - Vison of Love

Classixx - Into the Valley (Julio Bashmore Remix)

NY Stomp - The NY House Trak

Paul Woolford - Untitled

Medlar - Can't Stop

Floorplan - Never Grow Old

Kyodai - Breaking

Lone - Airglow Fires

Simian Mobile Disco & Bicep - Sacrifice

Todd Terje - Strandbar (Disko Version)

Teengirl Fantasy - Cheaters (John Talabot's Classic Vocal Refix)

Crazy P - Heartbreaker

Deep House Playlist

Tracklist:

Floating Points - Love Me Like This (Nonsense Dub)

HNNY - For The Very First Time (Dirtytwo's Midas Touch Remix)

Nicholas - Things Of The Past (NY Club Mix)

Anthony Naples - Mad Disrespect

The Phantom - Vogue Dub

Chesus - Special

Damiano von Erckert & Funkycan - Symphonie of a Brother

Wbeeza - Billy Green Is Ded

KMFH - Down!

Session Victim - Good Intentions

October - String Theory

Andres - Jack City

Motor City Drum Ensemble - Raw Cuts #6

Last Magpie - (Who Knows) Where Love Goes

Nitetime - Teddy's Jam

Trevor Deep Jr - Keep On!

Omar S - The Shit Baby

Wil Maddams - Stand In For Love

Mosca - The Way We Were

Space Dimension Controller - The Love Quadrant

Tito Wun - The Way U Do It

Theo Parrish - Solitary Flight

Guest Mixes

We've got not two but three guest mixes for you today here at White Noise, so get your listening hats on.

First up is a mix courtesy of our ever-reliable resident, G More. His excellent guest mix spans 20 years of house and garage.

Bump, Flex & Shwang

 

Tracklist:

Meli'sa Morgan - Still In Love With You (Meli'sa's In The House)

NY Stomp - Can You Feel It?

Storm Queen - Look Right Through (MK Don't Talk To Me Vocal Mix)

R.B.M. - The Boy (Ralph's Hard House Mix)

Moné - We Can Make It (The Groove Mix) 

NY Stomp - The NY House Trak

R.B.M. - The Boy (Boy "More" Beats) 

Joy Orbison - Ellipsis

Somore - I Refuse (What You Want) (Industry Standard Mix) 

Terrence Dixon - Return Of The Speaker People (Kausto's Sudden Aphasia Mix) 

Brawther - Spaceman Funk (Deep Club Mix)

If you're done with that and desperate for more, we have a couple of mixes courtesy of _moth on Mixcloud. Both tracklists are excellent, there's a mix of dusty, sunny house and another darker mix for the night hours.

Summertime Mix

Tracklist:

Fatima feat. Floating Points – Cinnamon

Motor City Drum Ensemble – L.O.V.E

Andrés – Drama Around The Corner

Session Victim – Good Intentions

Pépé Bradock – Path Of Most Resistance

Omar S feat. L’Renée – SEX (CGP Remix)

October – String Theory

Claptone – Cream

Anthony Naples – Mad Disrespect

Nitetime – Teddy’s Jam

Huxley – Box Clever

West Norwood Cassette Library – Coming On Strong

Moodymann – Why Do U Feel

Night Time Mix

Tracklist

DJ Shadow – Transmission 2

John Talabot – So Will Be Now

Burial – NYC

Bo Saris – She’s On Fire (Maya Jane Coles Remix)

Dusky – Lost Highway

Maya Jane Coles – What They Say

Kahn – Like We Used To

Akkord – Back & Forth

Burial – Loner

Artifact – Deserted

Dusky – No More

Deadboy – Heartbreaker

DjRum – Turiya

Ramadanman – Don’t Change For Me

The xx – Crystallised (Dark Sky Remix)

The Drop – Looking To The Sky (DjRum Remix)

Session Victim – The Haunted House of House

Label: Delusions of Grandeur

House music has always, at its heart, been about the endless refinement of the groove. Perhaps that is why, although many dance genres come and go (although resurgences do happen), there has always been a place for house music, and the genre is currently undergoing its biggest revival in recent years. So what better time for an album that is not just a house album, but seems in some way an album about house?

Zoinks

Hailing from Lüneberg, Germany, Hauke Freer and Matthias Reiling have been releasing as Session Victim since 2008 and this marks their debut LP, a collection comprising material released across three EPs on Delusions of Grandeur. Throughout their careers the pair have shown an irreverent talent for mining house music’s past in order to access its future, and they’ve rarely failed to produce those perfect grooves. The music of Session Victim has always been warm, solid, and eminently danceable, and on this LP we see the truest and grooviest statement from them yet, although unfortunately the release is marred by a lazy final quarter.

The Haunting of the title is eminently apparent as soon as the record begins to play; the ghosts of Chicago, Detroit and New York house run rampant through these eleven tunes, and the producers clearly have a deep understanding and love of their source material. Yet to the duo’s credit these tracks always remain modern and tasteful, never resorting to simplicity or the siren-call of retro fetishism. The sounds of old hardware are evoked along with the new, and while the song structures are rarely wildly unexpected, they prove immensely satisfying on repeated listens, both for the dancer and the home listener.

Cow Palace

That said, sitting at home and listening to this LP without moving around should prove quite a challenge. By second track Zoinks you’ll know that these grooves are so strong it’s impossible not to dance; the pair lay on warm pads and crunchy beats along with some perfect filtering synthwork, and it’s a recipe for success that they pull off time and time again. This music is unabashedly straight-up house, but it’s all done so very right that it’s hard to decry it for a lack of variation: the beats always hit hard and just on time, the synths unfailingly weave strong melodies, and there’s always a wealth of detail on offer for those who want to explore deeper than the banging grooves. The early tracks stand out especially strongly; opener Dark Sienna paces with moody vibes and superb vocal flourishes, while Push Comes To Shove takes a warmer, stop-start approach with a heavy bassline and mutating synthwork laid over a thick bed of bristling percussion and tight handclaps.

Session Victim have a noticeable habit of including a killer detail towards the close of their tracks, whether it’s a whole phase like the desperate ‘please’ in Zoinks  and the tension-building ‘in the dark’ in Dark Sienna or merely a minute vocal blip such as the one that nuances the close of LP standout Cow Palace. As a result you’ll want to follow each of these tracks through to the end, as each is crafted with due precision and care. The LP hits its highest mark with the phenomenal classic Good Intentions, a track which apparently had Move D in tears when he played it as a closer in a summer festival set. In this short track is the summation of everything Session Victim do best; a powerful groove with a jazzy Rhodes melody and some insanely feel-good vibes. 

Good Intentions

The pair never manage to quite top Good Intentions, but the first eight tracks on this LP give it a good enough run for its money. Unfortunately, the album droops significantly in its final quarter. When the beats begin to disappear the tunes clearly start to fall apart. Light Scent of Decay is toothless and hugely overlong; the minor variations in structure and instrumentation can’t make it interesting for 3 minutes, let alone 10. Following this is F.I.N.E., an odd tune that features relative unknown Grand Agent rapping listlessly over the top. The production is a little basic but keeps the track afloat with some punchy beats, but Grand Agent lacks the personality, voice and lyrics to save the tune. The final track Flying Visit gives me the vague sensation of being in a very cheery waiting room, and it’s a puzzling closer to an album that abruptly gives up after the strongest of starts.

It wouldn’t even be fair to say that the sequencing leaves a lot to be desired, because the gap in quality between the first eight tracks and the last three is vast, and it appears Session Victim overstretched themselves slightly in trying to pack in a full LP’s worth of material. It’s not the end of the world that every track isn’t perfect, but listening to the album through from the start has the unfortunate effect of leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth after so much brilliance at the start. Still, the pair achieve so much with the front end of The Haunted House of House that you can forgive the final run, as there are more warm house gems frontloaded onto this album than a lot of producers put out in a career.

7.5/10

Holidays and Quick Spins: Session Victim, Christian Löffler

Hi everyone,

White Noise has been running for a year now, and I thought it was time that the site had a bit of an overhaul. As well as a much prettier layout, there are now different sections in the header for easy navigation and the site runs a great deal faster.

I'd also like to introduce a new feature to bring to the site, in the form of a brief series of musical recommendations. I run this site solo so I don't always have time to write a full review of all the great stuff I hear, and I thought it would be worthwhile to occasionally drop in with some recommendations of albums and tracks without the need for a whole review.

Of course I will still be writing reviews, features, and creating playlists, and each of these articles will go in their appropriate section so the key posts won't get lost amongst more casual recommendations.

Finally, tomorrow I'm leaving for a trip around the West coast of the USA for a month, so the site won't be regularly updated again until mid-July.

Have a good month everyone, and I'll leave you with some recommendations from what I've been listening to this week.

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Session Victim - The Haunted House of House

The first thing I'd like to recommend is this fantastic album which slipped under my radar on release a couple of weeks back. Session Victim have been slowly building a reputation following on from their 2011 classic Good Intentions, and their debut LP has finally hit the shelves. It's a top-notch album of classic-sounding house music with a modern twist, and the end result couldn't be better. Literally every track is expertly put together and demands attention, from Dark Sienna's moody locked grooves to the smooth, feel-good glitching of Cow Palace by way of the title track's punchy boogie vibes. It's stylish, it's current, and it's endlessly satisfying and rewarding on repeated spins, so I recommend you get yourself a dose of Session Victim as soon as humanly possible.

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Christian Löffler - A Forest

The second album I highly recommend is by Christian Löffler, whose Aspen EP I reviewed earlier in the year. Here the German producer offers a beautiful collection of organic and cerebral deep house; intricately structured and with an enormous array of natural-sounding textures. The album is clearly a labour of love for Löffler and it comes off as one, presenting a singular and consistent vision whether its in the deep groove found deep in a jungle of synths, effects and chimes in A Forest, the melancholic vocals that haunt the clicks and beats of Blind or the tumbling synths in pacing closer Slowlight. There are even a few tracks featuring guest vocalists, and while not quite all of these work for me (Gry's voice really starts to grate about 5 seconds into Feelharmonia), other collaborations such as Eleven feat. Mohna are a surprising success. Any fans of the deeper, slower end of the Electronic spectrum should check this out as Löffler's star is only set to rise from here.

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That's it from me for a month, I'll leave you with some moody vintage house vibes, this killer track out soon on Delsin courtesy of Trevor Deep Jr. It's certainly been brightening up my day.

 

Trevor Deep Jr - Keep On!