Back catalogue: Funky/Club House

Review: Alex Attias is the man behind the El Mustang Project and here he teases his upcoming album with a couple of new tunes on Visions Inc. As always, they find him fusing the organic with the synthetic to make for deep and silky house tunes that straddle genres and ages. 'Love Me Better' opens with a gorgeous vocal and rickety drums that ooze charm. 'Dream Drumz' gets a little more raw and edgy with pixelated melodic spirals and 'Life' gets old school. Cowbells ping about the mix as distorted bass and frazzled pads add texture to this subtle throwback jam.

Review: Louie Vega's famed Elements of Life project - an ever-changing collective of musicians who create live house, disco, Latin and soul tracks - returns to action, this time with old friend Josh Milan in tow. In its original Louie Vega mix form (track 3),'Let Us Shine' is a deliciously deep soulful house number with tribal-influenced percussion, gospel-influenced vocals and Vega's usual impeccably produced instrumentation. Milan provides two top-notch 'Honeycomb' mixes (vocal and instrumental), which opt for a breezier and more tactile vibe with nods to both early New York garage-house and the earlier 'proto-house' wave spearheaded by Boyd Jarvis, Timmy Regisford and Paul Simpson. Rounding off the EP is live Latin house workout 'Los Tonos Segrados', featuring guest musician Axel Tosca.

Review: Toolroom is one of the biggest house labels in the age these days. Mark Knight's outlet is a go-to for the big room lovers and pool party crews of the world and it's easy to see why when you tune into his latest label sampler. It brings together the old and the new school with the piano laced, steely house pumper 'Make You Happy' from Mark Knight, Todd Terry and James Hurr kicking off. Eddie Thoneick's 'Take It Back' gets more down and dirty with a sleazy bassline, Pete Griffiths brings belting vocal house energy to 'Get Together' and Muzzaik and Stadiumx combine for the flashy and raved-up 'Echoes.'

Review: The sixth salvo on Sundries sees the Russian label offer up a third serving of 'Disco Goodies'. Rising stars ScruScru and Meowsn, fresh from the release of a fine collaborative album, get things going via the rubbery, electric piano-smothered deep disco-house bounce of 'Your K' - all chunky beats, swirling strings and dazzling Rhodes solos - before scene stalwart Hotmood blur the boundaries between original production and re-editing on the sparkling, piano-sporting disco-goes-sample house excellence of 'Hard Feelings'. Over on side B, Lowres wraps some low-slung disco samples around a killer bassline and snappy drum machine beats on the heady and hedonistic 'Slishish', while Erik Ellman's 'Tribal Disco' is a beefed-up, full-throttle disco-house translation of a lesser-known 10970s discoid gem

Review: Shall Not Fade is one oath most well rounded labels in the UK right now and this latest drop from Theos and El Rod is another stylish house offering. 'NMW' kick off with blame deep house grooves laced up with soft none chords that bring warm late night colour. 'Please, Get Away' is another fresh electronic house cut with playful melodic phrases over irresistibly warm bass and pitched up r&b vocals. 'Hypnotizing Eyes' completes the trio of originals with a chunky house funk, bulky kicks and spaced out cosmic chords. An Oden & Fatzo remix closed won with some French filter house magic.

Review: Toronto label Selections has become a firm favourite with house heads and now starts a nice sideline with its Special Edition 2023 series. This one welcomes Lea Lisa with her track 'Conversation Between Us' (Heide Club Mix) which is straight up underground house for the heads. Then comes an unreleased Javonntte remix of Evenn's 'One For Love' that pairs things back to raw dub essentials. Dan Only's 'Love Saturates' then gets a fine and formerly unreleased remix by Italy's Black Loops that has pristine drum programming and a fine bassline. Add in Sean Roman's jazzy dancer 'Sir William' and Jamn Ensemble's 'Convection' and you have a timeless house EP.

Review: Danny Krivit is currently known as one of the music community's greatest purveyors of top quality disco & house as he continues to perform regularly before sold-out audiences around the world. With his unique ear for what works on the dancefloor he has also become known as "King of the Re-edit." Danny has a deep connection to Kim English's "It Makes A Difference" release on Nervous Records from 2006. Krivit worked with writer Kyle Smith on the remixes that originally made this tune an anthem at his 718 Sessions parties as well as one of the highlights of club nights from Tokyo to New York to London that appreciate quality soulful house. The B-side is Danny's re-edit of one of the most famed dubs from the Nervous catalogue as well as for the producers Mood II Swing. Upon its release in 1993 this dub emerged as one of the defining sounds of summer 1993 at Ministry Of Sound which had just recently opened the year before. The "rushing rushing rushing" hook is well knownby golden era of house afficianados around the world and he does an amazing job bringing this essential hook.

Review: Mushroom Pillow is on a proud and so far successful mission to bring back Latin American music from the 60s-80s via its Relatin project. it's all about mixing up the traditional and the modern and putting fresh spins on what went before. Many of the originals they look to have gone unnoticed the first time round and that's the case here as Franc Moody adds his own twist to Elia & Elizabeth's 'Alegria.' His remix is a sympathetic one that gets the hips swinging over fat and funky disco bass and beneath the sunny Latin vocals. He strips them away on the instrumental version on the flip.

Review: Moiss Music released a hot pair of EPs in February and repeat the same trick in May with another quality double drop. It is a various artists offering as always with DJ Delivery's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' a sure-fire floor-filling anthem to start things off. It's got loopy drums and string samples as well as sumptuous vocal harmony then Borka & The Gang keep the feel-good vibes alive with 'Kidding Feelings and Even Funkier's' Dance With Your Feet' is another smile-inducing bit of disco warmth with withering sic-fi synths and hip swinging claps. Jordan Reece's 'Prayer' has hints of gospel in the vocal while noodling keys and tight kicks all get looped to perfection.

Review: Escort's 'Cocaine Blues' is undoubtedly a 21st century disco classic -a peak-time ready riff on Dillinger's 'Cocaine in the Brain' and People's Choice's 'Do It Anyway You Wanna' that has been a mainstay in DJ sets for the last 12 years. These fresh versions do a decent job breathing new life into a familiar favourite. John Morales does a good job of joining the dots between disco and house on his EP opening multi-track remix, while band-member JKriv adds a little more weight and spacey synth noises aplenty on his similarly fine rework. Sheffield's Crooked Man take over on side B, first delivering a pitched-down revision blessed with jangling piano stabs ('Crooked Line 1'), before reaching for the squelchy synths and trippy noises on a slightly wilder take ('Crooked Line 2').

Review: Gilberto Gil and Ernie Watt's classic jazz dancer 'Gondwana' gets a big remake here for the main man OPOLOPO. He offers a tweak that brings broken beat funk, with his jazz-fusion keys dancing over the shuffling drums and bass and mad pianos brings the vibes. The vocals are the icing on the cake for this class South American party starter. On the flip he turns his sights to Kevin Moore's 'Speak Your Mind' which is a summery and soulful disco heater with a squelchy boogie bassline that takes off and ensures the dance floor will do the same.

Review: It is fair to say that Demon Singles Club has another top nugget on vinyl here. 'Days Like This' by Shaun Escoffrey is a proper good slice of modern house music and it gets remixed here by top dogs Spen & Karizma, MJ Cole and DJ Spinna. This reissue of the 2002 original has been remastered by Phil Kinrade at Alchemy Mastering with the new remixes including the first-ever vinyl appearance of the MJ Cole contribution. There is lots to love in each of these with all of them being standouts and perfect for playing as the days warm up.

Review: Athens Of The North can usually be found honing their expert craft of unearthing nigh impossible to find disco, and reissuing it in the utmost quality. However, the work of East Coast Love Affair (Euan Fryer and Nick Moore) is deceiving, as it adopts the image of one of said reissues while actually being fully contemporary music. 'Get Down' tops up a slew of master-quality releases for the label, expropriating a vocal line from obscure Minneapolis 'lo-fi' band Quiet Storm and putting it back into an entirely new, drunk-and-high instrumental context (think lasers, whistles, funk basses, an overall hazy sound). 'Can You Deal', on the flip, lends Quiet Storm a similar treatment, albeit for a cleverly hi-lo-fi disco house treatment.

Review: Frankie Knuckles and Eric Kupper's Director's Cut project continues with its third rendition, bringing together yet another eight house remixes of established neo-soul and trip-hop songs by the pair and their friends. Standouts on this one include Tony Humphries' Work & Play Mix of Inaya Day's 'Let's Stay Home', which follows the singer's orders to "take advantage of this little bit of rainfall" to produce a slice of humble, heated house pie; and Director's Cut's 'Signature mixes' of sultry lullabies by Martina Topley-Bird and Vintage Dbow.

Review: The legacy of Frankie Knuckles will never diminish even if releases like this one day eventually dry up. Forever regarded as 'The Godfather of House' it is now almost a decade since his passing. In his prolific career he hooked up with Eric Kupper many times as Director's Cut and this is a collection of their best works. It's full of house classics that have all been remixed by their fair hand, from 'Your Love" (feat Jamie Principle) to 'The Whistle Song' via 'I'll Take You There', all of which are spine tingling emotional deep house anthems that never lose their shine.

Review: Elodie Di Patrizi is an Italian pop singer. She first came to prominence as the runner-up on the fifteenth season of the show Amici di Maria De Filippi. This is her fourth album titled Ok Respira and features a wide selection of songs which demonstrate her many diverse talents as an artist. Whether it's Eurodance, EDM, deep house/disco, and straight-up pop that she's made her name with, and of course there's the song 'Due' which she premiered at this year's edition of San Remo Music Festival to much fanfare.

Review: If Electribal Soul sounds deliciously vintage, there's a good reason for that. An exemplary exploration of glassy-eyed synth-pop and electro, deep house and street soul marked out by tactile electronic motifs, warm basslines and Billie Ray Martin's superb vocals, the album was mostly recorded in 1991 and '92 at a time when relationships in the group were beginning to fray. Now tidied up and released by Martin three decades after it was shelved, Electribal Soul has the feel of a genuine lost classic - a set that would have received rave reviews at the time had it appeared in late 1992 as originally intended. A genuine triumph that's as loved-up and saucer-eyed as a sweaty hug at sunrise on an Ibizan beach.

Review: Todd Edwards is affectionally known as Todd the God because of his skills. Those skills are two fold - he famous fomented this own style of garage with quick beats and cut up vocals used like an extra instrument in the mix. But he is also a badass DJ who can slam through house and garage with high energy and plenty of charger. As such, he is rightly celebrated here with an overdue entry into Defected's long running House Masters series. All his most famous joints make the cut, from the bumping remix of St Germain to the lively vocal soul of his dub of Kim English via originals like his jazzy, chord laced anthem 'Push The Love.'