If This Is House I Want My Money Back II EP 1 vinyl

If we are to judge the forthcoming If This Is House I Want My Money Back Zwei compilation from Permanent Vacation on the basis of the four tracks on this sampler, then it's likely to be one of our favourite releases this year. That's no surprise, when such luminaries as the Hivern Disc duo of John Talabot and Pional are joined by Jacob Korn and Session Victim. Talabot opens proceedings with the stunning "Leave Me", which is essentially a calling card for his slickness and weaving samples into his own magical spell. If you like house music that never sits still and is constantly threatening to mutate in different directions then "Leave Me" will delight right up to its final dramatic descent into silence. On first listen Session Victim's "Large Professor" seems quite narrow in its ambitions in comparison, but slowly new qualities reveal themselves when the soft vocal sample comes gliding through. This is a sensation that hits you on "Oohja", the collaboration betwixt Jacob Korn and Cuthead, which swiftly strays from the boisterous percussive opening to a sprawling epic tinged with Afro flavours and melodic warmth. Pional drags the tempo down for the final passage as "Just Passing Through" deviates towards a dusted, slightly alien beatdown path that still proves as hypnotic as its predecessors.

Lovemonk Records, Lukas Micka, Shaddy (Foul & Sunk), Name In Lights, Permanent Vacation, Alexander Robotnick, Sisterhood, Chromatic Filters, Beto Cravioto