Back in stock: House

Review: Earl's back with 002 from his new label Melange. 3 power cuts in raw form. This time bringing along good friend and previous collborator, Kofi Tarris.

Review: Italojohnson has clearly decided that less is more, having limited their output to one self-released 12" a year since 2013. Volume 10 in the mysterious threesome's self-titled series predictably contains more twisted, tried-and-tested material. The untitled A-side sounds like a modern update of a breakbeat-boasting Frankie Bones classic, with hectic bursts of percussion, surging sub and a classic riff taking it in turns to impress. There's more of an acid house feel to the similarly untitled flipside workout, with booming, mangled vocal snippets and sharp electronic stabs riding a thunderous groove, '80s electro hits and a classic Chicago bassline. There's little subtle about either track, but they sound like guaranteed floorfillers.

Review: A sublime five-track EP that opens with 'Magik,' a nice loose and fluid downtempo sound with lush and wispy melodies. Elsewhere 'Reboot' brings some sleek metallic lines and cosmic keys, 'Reality 2.0' has funkier drums, 'RSVP' is a late-night electro-tinged reverie and 'Keep Livin' closes as a ten-minute zoned-out opus.

Review: If you dig deep house - hell, electronic music full stop - then you should be rather excited by the arrival of Cerebral Hemispheres, the first Mr Fingers album for 26 years, and the first of any kind by Larry Heard since 2003. As you'd expect, the album is exceptionally good, with Heard's famous musicality and fluid keys-work coming to the fore throughout. While rooted in melodious, huggable deep house, Heard naturally uses the opportunity to veer off in the myriad of different directions, touching on jazz, dub, downtempo grooves, soul, samba, tech-soul, deep acid house and much more besides. It has the feel of a genuine future classic and could well be his strongest album to date. Given his track record, that's a bold claim, but Cerebral Hemispheres really is that good.

Review: If there's one label to trust with presenting a faithful and knowledgeable overview of the '90s garage house sound, it is surely Z Records. Joey Negro's evergreen stable has been a bastion of the music since its inception, and this second volume of gold standard tracks is as well-informed as the first. Serious cuts and mixes from the likes of Satoshi Tomiie, Kings Of Tomorrow, Kerri Chandler, Marshall Jefferson - the list of big hitters goes on. But it's not just marquee bookings - there are some seriously headsy jams in here that will even have connoisseurs learning a thing or two. Bursting with musicality, soul and grooves by the pound, this is exactly how a comp should be done.

Review: Life & Death's next ambitious undertaking is courtesy of label chief DJ Tennis who teams up with Israeli indie-dance duo Red Axes. They were first introduced to each other by Superpitcher & Rebolledo (The Pachanga Boys) at a festival in Corsica - and the rest is history. Recorded on top of a decadent old shopping mall in the middle of Tel Aviv, the trio are said to have combined their "love of psy and Mediterranean influences" over a scheduled week of recording sessions together. The result is Redrago, a collection of tripped-out dancefloor oddities that take in everything from lo-slung punk funk ("Rave 'N' Roll), heady and (acid) bass-driven dancefloor narratives that cross over into vintage pop ("Il Veliero"), deep kosmiche ("Plastelina") and deep and tunnelling techno as heard on the epic "Ventilo".

Review: It's been a while since we last heard from former Ubiquity Records modern soul starlet Jeremy Ellis. Despite his mid-2000s success, the man with the golden tonsils has been off the radar since 2010. He's sounding as smooth and soulful as ever on this surprise return to action, lending his impeccable tones to a chunk of lilting deep house from Sandman and Riverside. Kai Alice handles remix duties on the A-side, delivering a tactile chunk of heavily electronic deep house with fluid chords and extended solos aplenty. That musical fluidity comes to the fore on the flipside KZREKchampa Club Dub, which peppers a shuffling, glassy-eyed groove with selected snippets of Ellis's brilliant vocal.

Review: Return to 2001: Swiss brothers Shakedown drop an iconic house anthem that debunked the standard XXL funk du jour with a much spacier, synth-based 80s boogie sound. Still relevant and heavily played, Defected have commissioned three on-point artists for the 2018 contemporisations: Peggy Gou gets her acid tweaks on, Tiger & Woods pitch down the vocal and dust off the Street Sounds electroid feel and Purple Disco Machine cooks up an unapologetic funked up house jam that wouldn't have gone amiss on Classic back in the day. For good measure Shakedown return with their own signature Galactic Boogie version that pumps with strong Moroder tendencies. Good night.