In the deeper regions of House, the keywords are restraint and control: when it works, it's as if the whole history of jazz, soul and funk were at the producer's command and are being carefully meted into his tracks like gold dust sprinkled onto vinyl grooves. While US Deep House can occasionally be overburdended by this musical inheritance, German producer Henrik Schwarz, whose first love was jazz, deploys the kind of soulful weight associated with the genre with a seemingly frictionless melodic touch. This collection is almost entirely comprised of his own tracks and remixes, performed live and seamlessly blended in the studio.

“Stop, Look & Listen,” “Kalimba Dance” and “Where We At” form a glorious triptych built around African percussion, playful House piano chords and chunky fingered jazz keyboards. The elements are all precisely plotted, as if Schwarz is using some cosmic equation to preserve their exact physical energy levels. The album's tight melodic locus seems to heighten its intensity, like liquid being forced through a narrow tube. It's this sense of constant pressure which enables Schwarz to pull off some bravura vocal treatments: his remix of “No Sun In The Sky” by Kraak & Smaak is a glistening ball… read more »