LIGHTHOUSE FAMILY Vinyl & CDs

Review: On reissued orange vinyl comes the debut set of sonic missives from house and easy listening via trip-hop heartthrobs Lighthouse Family; a miraculous birth for the duo of Tunde Baiyewu and Paul Tucker. This resplendent 1995 LP lay bare the pop dance musical sensibility of the time; string hit samples, synth funk basses, and a dark mode, prescient of the the leather-jacketed cool that would later peak on release of the first Matrix film. The code of cinematic chic is palpable here; songs that would otherwise qualify only as sparsely punctuated, pop lounge-funk come heavily tempered and assoiled by trilling, massive-attacked string backings ('Let It All Change', for example), producing a thrower-backer but still a classic record.