Andy Vaz: House Warming
Yore Records

The third full-length album from Yore founder Andy Vaz comes with the fabulous title House Warming, but the title's meaning signifies beyond the surface level: its music, quite literally, is as straight-up, old-school, and deep as house music gets, and it's invitingly warm and soulful, too; stated otherwise, no one will mistake House Warming for chilly underground techno. Produced entirely using analogue synths and the Roland series (from the 808, 909, 505, and 606 to the original 303) and featuring a few vocal guest spots, the material might be Vaz's most immediately accessible to date (without being either pandering or cloying), and whilst it might have roots in Detroit and Chicago, it uses the music of the past as a galvanizing force of inspiration.

The album grooves from the get-go, with the trippy scene-setter “House Warming (Intro)” kicking things into gear with computerized voice accents and a wiry, drum machine-styled pulse. The music deepens after that light-footed prelude when Eva Soul emotes in “Nobody” over the kind of slinky backdrop at which Vaz excels, and the extended jam grows ever funkier when he folds generous helpings of percussive detail—hi-hats, congas, and the like—into the mix. Vaz mixes it up thereafter with percolating workouts that are acidy (“Oppidum Ubiorum”) and dizzying (“Want U Back”) by turn, with a conspicuously large sampling of the former.

December 2015