Harold Heath
Harold is a music journalist, DJ, producer, music-tech tutor and all round smartass.
A quality mid-tempo room-lifter on Rare Wiri finds Manolo's sophisto-cosmic-disco workout "Amalfi Drive" remixed by Manuel Costela.
The third installment of "Down To The Sea and Back" collects a set of obscure tunes that are united only by their rarity and by whatever indescribable, indefinable quality qualifies them as "Balearic."
There's a comedy show in the UK called Peep Show, and at some point in season one, a character in an electronic music duo writes a bassline so good that he apparently couldn't turn it off. This is one of those.
Nu Northern Soul drops a mini-album of "re-interpretations" of fusion maestro Chick Corea tracks by DJ Maarten Goetheer featuring Thai power-house drummer Pong Nakornchai.
The two volumes of this compilation chart yet another chapter in the evolution of dance music, another set of DJs and producers who lurked in the background innovating their own little niche - in this case, tech house.
Smooth soft-focus jazz-tinged disco and a tasty bruk-ish Inkswell remix make up this package from DJ/producer Ed Temple.
25 years after its debut Techno Rebels still shines as a love letter to techno and the city of Detroit where it was born.
Two tracks taken from the debut album of Nicaraguan producer Alfonso Lovo and re-worked by Brian Jackson (of Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson fame) brings '70s Latin psychedelic magic for your dance floor.
Proof that house music makes everything better here in this stellar Primal Scream remix release. Ready To Go Home and Love Insurrection get taken to the dancefloor by a house music remix dream team of Terry Farley and Wade Teo, Hardway Bros, and Black Science Orchestra.
Expertly crafted house grooves from Bushwacka, the kind of tunes that are a pleasure to play and likely to stay in your record box/usb for the foreseeable future.
"Everybody Knows" is a four track house EP from Lars Dales, one half of Dam Swindle, and featuring multi-instrumentalist Lorenz Rhode, their second on Toy Tonics as "Sound Support."
Spincycle are UK producers Dave Clements and Andy Davies, who put out a small but perfectly formed catalog of pristinely programmed, highly danceable tech house in the early 2000s, records that are still entirely playable today. This three tracker is the debut release on their new label Coin-Op.
A belated follow up to 2007's Vol 1, Lovebirds' "Modern Stalking Vol 2" is a four track EP, highlighted by the 103 BPM sultry disco chugger "Reachin'."
Seventeen remixes of five album tracks from Lay-Far's True, Necessary, Kind album, covering various flavours of house, broken beat, bass, techno and drum & bass.
Six tracks of Italian house from System of Survival that are nice and fresh and the DJ equivalent of an adjustable wrench - they're really useful in a multitude of situations. In DJ terms, they're tension builders, palette cleansers, and transition tracks, i.e.: they're super-useful.
Japanese producer BRISA drops a varied five-tracker of tunes featuring remixes from Jon Dixon and Byron The Aquarius on Cosmocities.
Harold Heath on Matt Anniss' newly revised & expanded "Join The Future: Bleep Techno & The Birth of British Bass Music."
Three excellent versions of the same acid track remixed by LDLDN, Slow Assembly and Void Complet, and all of them work in their own way.
Session Victim's "Screen Off" is one of those tunes with a one-bar loop at its heart so strong that it just effortlessly carries the whole thing.
Harold Heath on Jeff Mills' excellent four-track Millsart X-Ray Zulu EP, released in 2024 on Axis Records.
MUST READ!
Visions: Inside the New Issue of 5 Mag
Chicago house music visionary Hieroglyphic Being, plus cover mix and interview with Galen, Z.I.P.P.O., a new label called FLURB, the breaking of Live Nation and more inside the new issue of 5 Mag, out now.
