Back catalogue: House

Review: Bass Culture founder, Rex Club legend and standard bearer for the Parisian underground, Julien Veniel shows fine form with his latest effort landing on Phonogramme. Featuring four tracks that each veer toward the techier ends of the house spectrum, 'The Game of Life' is sure to find plenty of admirers of floor-focused subterranean club tackle. Launching via the bumping rhythms and bouncy bass of X-Calibur, it starts as it means to go on. Upping the energy a couple of notches, the wonky bass and paranoid vocals of 'Narcissistic Scratch' power over chunky drums for a strobe-lit, late-night workout. Scene stalwart Satoshi Tomiie keeps things looped and driving on his pumped version of 'Deadbeat', before the dubbed-out original sees the record home in deliciously heady style.

Review: Groove Culture enlist Italy's Da Lukas for a stinging string-disco propeller, 'Doin' Me Wrong', backed up on the B by 'Good Man'. Massive pressure-house feels coincide with the trilling afterglow of disco, as rock-bottom breakdowns prefigure high-as-a-kite apexes, word-painting the A track's lyrical focus on manic depressive push-pull relationships ("you tell me don't do this, you tell me don't do that"). The B-side track is weightier by comparison, deploying waterier wahs and an echo of Motown in its otherwise relentless garagey swing.

Review: Bari's Deepshakerz return to key UK label Crosstown Rebels with a tight, percussive three-tracker rooted in the crossover between Afro-tinged house and punchy, early Chicago rhythms. Opener 'Give It 2 U' throws down a sinewy blend of filtered vocal chops and tumbling drums, straddling jacking minimalism and maximal groove with characteristic flair. On the B-side, 'The Beginning Groove' slows the rush slightly, working a heady, looping motif into a more restrained late-night hypnotiser. Closer 'Green Light' features a crisp vocal from Dennis Wonder, building up a more melodic high with bright chords and bouncy swingiless brooding, more pure release. It's the Italian duo's second release for Damian Lazarus' label, and a strong showcase of their versatility within a signature sound.

Review: Spanish label NeighbourSoul bring a heraldic design sensibility to wildout disco edits on 12", with this latest record taking on a leonine art direction on the inner label and sleeve. A top-up to their enduring vinyl-only series, this one hears a resident editor arride four more most-pleasing disco loops, believably emulating a bygone time in which DJs would sticker and knife their records to create workable tools, in the absence of software.

Review: Not to be confused with the heavy Dutch electro hero of the same name (he of Klakson Records fame), Dexter was the early-to-mid 2000s alias of UK tech-house producer Matt Royall. Sushitech Records recently released a retrospective of his work, Past Moves, and now German label Repeat has decided to reissue 2004's Size Counts EP. A-side 'Break It Down' is deep, druggy, chuggy and pleasingly off-kilter, with delay-laden spoken word snippets and echoing hand percussion hits rising above a driving bassline and hypnotic, locked-in drums. The pace and intensity increases on flipside 'Once Again', a kind of Hipp-E & Halo style West Coast tech-house workout rich in trippy female vocal snippets, ghostly chords and dubby bass.

Review: This latest Unxpozd release has taken a hot minute to arrive but it's been worth the wait, because once again DJ Aakmael shows off his deep house class. '6minutes' kicks off with the sort of whimsical late-night chords that soon get you dreaming as the loveably lazy grooves slouch on. 'Just A Track pt. 8' shows Aakmael's sample skills as he chops up the sounds with some nice jazzy keys. You won't find a groove more lush and smooth than the gently cosmic 'Track 123' while 'Autumn' is perfectly stripped back to chunky kicks, slowly ascending chords and a hint of Kerri Chandler soul with a gospel vocal hook.

Review: These two classy producers, the former Norwegian and the latter from Switzerland, team up for a raw, heartfelt slab of underground house on Sex Tags UFO. Fuelled by weekly live jam sessions and arranged with pure instinct at Casa de Fett, this four-tracker feels organic, impulsive and gloriously unpolished i house music as a feeling, indeed. The opening cut hits immediately with a heavy bass presence, a jacking 909, swirling pads and an irresistibly uplifting melody. It's simple, efficient and laser-focused on the dancefloor's emotional core. Track two eases the vibe into a sunrise groove, weaving a classic Ibiza guitar into its dusty hardware pulse i loose, warm and full of promise. Flipping over, the third track dips even deeper. It's sentimental yet driven, with shuffling percussion and dreamy pads creating a bittersweet late-night atmosphere. The final track is the EP's toughest i a rough-edged acid house burner that brings grit and urgency without losing the duo's charmingly off-kilter touch. Throughout, DJ Sommer's slick studio craft and Burger Man's wonky sensibility merge into something greater than the sum of their parts.

Review: OGE hits release number 19 with a delectable new bap from DJ Sandwich, layering sweet programmable piano cheeses and cornichons between tricky, seeded deep tech sourdough slices. It's the first release by the artist for the otherwise usually "unknown artistic" moniker, through which the likes of Funk E, Vincentlulian, Phillip Boss and Giralda have also bared their identities. Best here has to be the low-filled 'Lee', whose sequent synth pianos, rubber resinous basses and splashy snares hint at a materially informed approach to dance production, emphasising raw organics and recalling the works of Bambooman.

Review: He's the original (and maybe only self-proclaimed?) house gangster and he is back in 2025 and sounding as good as ever. Puerto Rico by way of Chicago's DJ Sneak makes beats as raw as the meat he likes to chuck on his BBQ grill and UK house legend Nail must be a fan cause it's his label he lands on now. This is a solid four-tracker that ticks all the boxes with its killer grooves and smart loops. 'All I Need In Life' is a playful opener, 'Das Gud!' gets more intense and trippy with its bleepy melodic refrains and 'Help Me Somebody' then sinks back into loose and dusty, disco-tinged drums with classic cowbell hits. 'What You Expecting From Me' is a sweaty and gritty warehouse banger to close with aplomb.

Review: Original Chi-Town bad man DJ Sneak shows up with his latest selection of loop-driven house jams, serving up five floor-focused cuts on the 'Disko Dialogue' EP. A key figure in the second wave of Chicago house, his prolific career has seen him explore acid house, disco cut-ups, and hypnotic, tracky realms. Much, if not all, of that is on display here. The title track features looped strings and echoing vocals over a pounding kick and skippy snares, while 'Kick Da Flow' follows a similar trajectory, albeit with a slightly more restrained mood. 'Bottom Acid' ups the energy with pulsing 303 gliding over piercing drums, while 'Acid Wunders' dives into trippier territory, with its nocturnal groove endlessly undulating. The rolling rhythms of 'Elements' cap a fine EP, with DJ Sneak proving he's lost none of his big-room bravado or production swagger.

Review: Formerly known as AI Robot, Calin Dumitrescu refound his human side under his own surname as alias, having found residence in local labels Atipic, Particular and Unutrei since 2020. His debut for Myriad Records finds the third EP in the UK label's catalogue, with the headshaking chords and feverish acids of 'Acid E' helping synthesise a pharmaceutical drug we didn't know could or should exist, while 'Lucid Dream Gone Fucked Up' implies the necessary disturbance of a dream we'd never want to wake up from, by the intrusion of mechanic breaks, spy-vs-spy basses and creepazoid pads. The final two, ending on the perc-heavy 'Play Pause', contrast the A with a celebratory mood.

Review: Marking out ten years of Monologues Records, label CEO Ben Gomori proposes a wide-ranging retrospective, bottling the label's ethos as a border-bending housebreaker. This sampler 12" complements the full 35-track digital release, which latterly mixes deep house, disco, Balearic, kwaito, breakbeat, jazz house, Afro house, melodic techno and more, these are the label's most slept-on cuts and utmost personal favourites, charting past releases by Gilles Peterson, Kerri Chandler, The Blessed Madonna, TSHA, Colleen Cosmo Murphy and Kamma & Masalo. The MO is to buck trends, and simply "sign and support good sh*t, wherever it comes from."

Review: TLM celebrates its 50th vinyl-only release with an exceptional offering of jazz-lounge house intonations. Legendary Canadian Mike Perras knocks down the first domino with 'Life Goes On', a jazzy house cut driven by a captive Rhodes groove. Craig Bratley follows with a deep houser featuring Tim Hutton on trumpet, while Mark Turner honours the legacy of Blaze on the A. The AA, meanwhile, introduces DFRA Experience Jazz Band from Argentina with 'Isolation', a smoothened pure jazz cut composed by Diego Ruiz and featuring Pablo Raposso on piano, Hernan Cassibba on double bass, Gonzalo Rodriguez De Vicente on sax, Joaquin Muro on trumpet, and Bruno Varela on drums. 'Sober' by Markus Enochson closes things out on a double bass boomer 'Sober', effecting a truly loose bonhomie.

Review: DBH welcome Mihai Popoviciu & David Delgado the the Pleasure Zone series with the 'Evolution' EP. Bringing jazzy, sloshy, jerking flavours to the tech house palette, 'Evolution' and 'Shifting' evolve and shift, convoking a delegated moot of propulsive chords and forward-driving janks, conveying the mood of a finely tuned closed clockwork system chugging away like the central engine of a wider contraption. Closer 'Black Light' operates more readily in the lower regions of things, proving unafraid of sounds that lean towards the more peripheral and umbral.

Review: This tasteful Spanish label always does a fine line in traditionally inclined deep house. Their latest drop brings together the talents of Andrew Lozano and Trevor Vichas. 'Don't U Feel It' kicks off with a playful skip in the drums and one of those spoken word vocals that add plenty of atmosphere. It's Demuir who remixes this one with even more light-hearted groove and jazzy Rhodes chords. Lozano and Vichas then offer 'With You' which keeps the dubby, smoky, frayed-edge house sounds rolling and 'Feel The Heat then brings a more upright groove with driving hits and swirling pads that speak to the soul.

Review: DJ Sotofett returns with a double 12" packed with eight hard-hitting, underground techno tracks. Featuring frequent collaborators LNS, L.A. 2000, Ronny Nyheim, and Zarate_Fix, this release is a direct nod to the no-nonsense techno nights at Berlin's iconic Tresor club, where Sotofett holds residency. Each track is crafted with pure dancefloor energy in mind, moving through dub-driven techno, acidic overtones, and percussive basslines, all delivered with a raw, uncompromising edge. WANIA mk1 is a masterclass in DJ-ready versatility, perfect for those who love their techno stripped back and potent. Standout cuts include the bombastic, percussion-heavy Preparation and the 909-vocoder-fuelled My Spirit Is In Techno Music, both of which exemplify the release's dedication to the underground essence of the genre. With alternative mixes from WANIA mk2 making an appearance, the album offers both continuity and innovation, keeping true techno fans hooked from start to finish. Sotofett's attention to detail in programming, mixing, and mastering is evident throughout, making this a must-have for DJs and clubbers who live and breathe the core of real, unfiltered techno music. WANIA mk1 isn't just an album; it's a statement for those who value authenticity in their club experience.