SAFT Spain Vinyl & CDs

Review: Creative Swing Alliance member Pablo Valentino has made some fine deep house over the years, much of it blessed with the distinctive swing of MPC drums and more than a few nods to jazz, but rarely anything quite as classy as this outing on Spanish label SAFT. For proof, look no further than opener 'Look Deeper', a kind of Dilla-does-deep house affair laden with starry electric piano motifs, eyes-closed female vocal samples and jazzy bass, and the dusty, sample-heavy beatdown vibes of 'X Rousse' (where musical polymath Bruno Havert guests under his Patchworks alias). Elsewhere, 'Bagaco' is a classic-sounding slab of dusty and warming deep house smothered in hazy stabs and Ron Trent style percussion, while Seb Wildblood's remix of the same track turns it into a spacey, dubby and ultra-deep breakbeat shuffler.