Premiere – Uplifting, jazzy and exclusive to Juno Daily, ‘Love Exists’ by Kai Alce
Hear it here first
Kai Alce is one of the most recognisable faces in American house music – so much so, in fact, that he recently moved into the fashion game. Yes, that’s one of his ND/ATL shirts that he’s sporting in the picture above, and he’s started manufacturing those sunglasses too, after fielding numerous enquiries about where he got them.
More importantly, his music productions are every bit as distinctive as his looks. He’s often included in the same breath as the legends of the Motor City, and rightly so. His family moved to Detroit at just the right time – 1980, at the start of the decade in which the music would develop and take hold – and later his distant cousin Chez Damier introduced him to the “progressive” scene of house and techno culture. When the hugely influential Music Institute after hours club, with its resident Derrick May, was opened by Damier, Alton Miller and George Baker, it was a young Kai who manned the lights.
He relocated in his 20s to Atlanta, in order to study psychology at the prestigious Morehouse College, but as well as bringing house and techno to the city via DEEP, his aptly-named, game changing decade-long Saturday night residency at local club MJQ, he kept his connections with Detroit and to this day returns for an annual party.
Extending into production and releasing his first EP in 2002, he’s steadily become someone whose vinyl experiments are coveted and snapped up by those in the know. No wonder new label Short Attention wanted to line him up for a track on their third release, a four track EP titled in utilitarian fashion ‘SA003’, also featuring Boo Williams, Owen Jay & Melchior Sultana and Hector Ram.
Alce’s contribution is called ‘Love Exists’ and is a gorgeously lively bit of deep house with some superlatively jazzy piano playing in generous helpings, expertly played by the nimble fingered Ricky Corey. It’s all the words the best house music generates – uplifting, soulful and irrepressibly groovy – and what’s more, you get to hear it before anyone else.
Listen to ‘Love Exists’ on YouTube:
Or Soundcloud:
Listen to excerpts from the whole EP here:
Pre-order your copy of ‘SA003’, out on July 31, by clicking here