teshno

since james priestly and giles smith’s first gatherings of forty people in a london pub over a decade over ago, they have grown into two of the most respected promoters in the city. and yes, whilst there have been some inspired bookings over the years; it’s their own dj sets which have most defined the seretsundaze brand (which now encompasses a booking agency and a recently rejuvenated label as well as parties across the planet). dealing most often in deep but clubby, proper house (rather than loopy, dull as dishwater catwalk stuff), it’s an aesthetic this double cd compilation would suggest they have perfectly mastered./p>

priestly takes the lead with disc one, kicking off with a smoky and lo-slung house groove which rises and rises, spurred on by a sparing string sample before a much freer bassline from space dimension controller adds a disco bent to the build up. from there the tempo goes up a notch thanks to ghl’s airy house cut ‘show me love’ and then it’s a case of priestly colouring outside the 4/4 beat structures he seamlessly lays end to end until the finale. there are delightfully light-footed and slinky ones, analogue drenched ones and more human vocal cuts, but never does the comfortable momentum (in much the same way as prosumer’s equally well balanced and excellent pbar mix) drop; never does the priest’ back himself into a corner and never do you stop dancing…

even the tracks that could be picked out as fillers are the sort of fixating grooves that you just don’t want to finish. i say filler, but it’s only the absolute stand-outedness (!) of so many others which rather overshadow the more streamlined inclusions. take the fractious hustle of recloose’s ‘ain’t changin’, infectious slide of franck roger’s ‘my name is’ or electric injections of losoul’s remix of 80s sounding jam ‘color correction’…. though each is relaying the same underlying message – dance you mother’ – it does so using its own charming and idiosyncratic vocabulary. so good is the first disc, in fact, that you can almost hear the calls of ‘one more tune’ in the silence that follows the end of track 13. and priestly must have felt the same way because he comes back from the silence for one final hurrah in the form of the celebratory, disco-tinged rejoice that is voyage’s ‘ i love you dancer’ from, incredibly, 1981 and it really makes the trip peak.

just as locked on to the mission to get you, and keep you, dancing is smith’s second disc. infused with similarly tasteful sounds (though from a wider range of scenes and styles) deep, woody, authentic house is fused onto sunnier stuff, zanzibar-esque stuff and dubbier strains of fine grain techno. in fact, dubby undercurrents swell under a lot of smith’s mix thanks to economical but effective sounds from mrsk, rolando and christopher rau which take you ever deeper into a darkened basement before the street lights above finally begin to flicker in the form of slam’s winding down cut, ‘insulate’.  midway through rolando’s remix of skudge a track or two before, eddie amador sings out ‘not everyone understands house music’ but, as for smith and priestly, they most certainly do.

buy it/listen