This blog’s been a bit techno-heavy when I’ve managed to write anything over the last year or so, so here’s a choice slice of house – from the mid-90s Chicago dream team of Ron Trent, Chez Damier and Alton Miller – to redress the balance.
Featured on 1995’s Collected Sounds of Prescription compilation, it was originally the lead track on a great EP which kicked off Derrick Carter’s Blue Cucaracha label a year earlier and which – slightly annoyingly for people like me who’ve been holding it close to the chest since day one – was repressed in 2014.
It’s deceptively simple – just a banging 909, a bit of percussion, a grooving sub bass, that killer reversed-sounding string vamp, and some freestyle vocals – but anyone who’s ever tried to make house music will tell you hard it is to make it sound as good as this. It’s one of those records that’s sheer joy to mix, and it’s so well engineered that it sounds heavy on almost any sound system, at any time of the night. Killer.
Nothin' But Magic 