DELANO SMITH Schallplatten & CDs

Review: US house mainstay Delano Smith has always operated at the dubber, more stripped-back and techno-leaning end of the spectrum. He is a master of crafting perfect loops that could roll for days a never grow dull. The full extent of that skill was laid bare on his wonderful album An Odyssey, which turns 20 in 2025. He has long been close to Sushitech who now reissue it in a very limited run on a special gold slab of wax. The tunes are heady, lo-fi, grainy and gorgeous sounds for warm-ups, zone-outs and plenty of the more discerning and intimate moments in between.

Review: Chicago born, Detroit-raised Delano Smith is one of the foundational artists of the contemporary house scenes. In 2023, he revealed he was suffering with a rare form of cancer but as this new EP title suggests, he is still here and still crafting high-grade sounds. 'When I Was Young' kicks off with his signature smoky drum loops and train travel sense of hypnosis. 'The Rush' is another heads down jam, this time marbled with eerie pads and wet clicks and claps that oil the groove while 'Rewired' shuts down with real late night delicacy and evocative minimalism.

Review: Detroit veteran Delano Smith returns on his Mixmode imprint for more of his singular style of dubby bass-driven house, with a smattering of innate soulfulness. Three sturdy tracks are featured on the Beneath EP: from the haunting back room dub of 'This Music Here' which is absolutely geared for those heads-down moments, and more basement vibes abound as heard on the hypnotic locomotive stomp of 'The Gutter', while over on the flip things end on a slightly more optimistic note with the swing-fuelled deepness of 'Euphoric'.

Review: American house don Delano Smith is one of the more low key artists from the mid west, but there is no real reason why he should be. He has a stripped back sound that is based on building the perfect loops and embellishing them with only the most subtle but subversive details. He follows that MO once more here on Mixmode Recordings. 'Twisted Dreams' is as stripped back as they come, but it still hooks you in for the ride. 'Anything' then gets a little more amped up, with bulky kick drums and mournful chords draped in from above. 'Constant' is full flavour, full bodied, rolling deep and dubby house par excellence.

Review: Coming off a successful transatlantic exchange, Brian Kage and his Michigander label keep the momentum, and the collaborative spirit, moving with an EP that hits closer to home. For any Detroit artist, working with Delano Smith would be on the bucket list, as one of the city's original, more influential DJs - before the D developed any of its "waves" - who would come into his own as a producer later to, once again, help mold the Techno City's sound. Make no mistakes about it, this tastemaker had a ripple effect back before techno even had a name, when it was just "progressive" music and mixing. The thing is, the feeling of admiration and respect here is mutual, from the moment Smith first stumbled across one of Kage's records and had to know who was making these sounds. This meeting of the minds happened organically and timely, with Keep 'em Movin' as the result.

Review: Norm Talley returns to his Upstairs Asylum label alongside fellow US house pioneer Delano Smith for Straight Up No Chaser, an eight-track opus featuring four solo cuts each. Talley's gritty, dubbed-out, low-rolling house style is present and correct throughout with the loopy chords of 'Blak Bottom' getting things going, 'The Flip' getting more cavernous and aqueous and 'ISO Vision' leaning into dub techno. 'Believe It' is a soulful deep house looper, while Smith gets bubbly with 'The Bassline', lays down thumping kicks on 'Travels 23' and his trademark synth smears on 'The Drive' while 'Remembrance' is a heady dub house cut that locks you into a state of perfect hypnosis.

Review: Every so often, a compilation comes along and delivers a snapshot of a city's underground music scene at a given moment in time. That's what compilers Rick Wilhite and Delano Smith have achieved with Parabellum Detroit, an expansive and predictably high-quality collection of cuts from some of the Motor City's finest producers. They naturally provide a couple of collaborative cuts of their own - the spacey, late-night techno hypnotism of '11 Minutes of Funk' and the intergalactic deep house drift of 'Neo Solaris', while there are also top-notch contributions from Javontte (the warm, soul-flecked deep house of 'Late Night Love'), Marcellus Pittman (beatdown chugger 'Everybody Party'), Gerald Mitchell AKA Soul Saver (the incredible 'Kaori'), the Moodymann Kenny Dixon Jr ( 'I'm Goin' Back') and Omar-S (a tidy Godson remix of 'VAT 69').