The tunes which have characterised our year.
Tom picks: Maceo Plex - Can't Leave You (Crosstown Rebels)
Maceo Plex Can't Leave You (Original Mix) by Gouranga
Producer LA Ried once said of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, “Everything in that song was catchy, and every instrument was playing a different hook. You could separate it into 12 different musical pieces and I think you'd have 12 different hits.”
By that rationale, in 2011 Maceo Plex created the Billie Jean of house. His 9 minute creation contains more hooks than a tackle box: rumbling basslines, spacey drums, funky guitar melodies, catchy vocal samples – he's thrown the kitchen sink into it. but rather than having everything in cacophonic competition, each part is given room to breathe. The way he's done this and still managed to make the tune sound coherent and dancefloor friendly is the reason nobody has come close to bettering it in 2011.
Emma picks: Solumun - Love Recycled 1
Solomun - Love Recycled 1 (Original Mix) by Electrocorp.fr
Over the years I've loved every incarnation of this song. From hearing the Michael McDonald original in a Spanish cafe as a child to its sample on office favourite Regulate and now in Solumun's dance edit; it never gets old for me. Hell, I even love this version by StringsonSteroids.
Like a lot of people, my taste in music has changed enormously over the years and this edit seems like the perfect barometer for the kind of sound I'm obsessed with at the moment. Warm, groove-laden house - is there anything better? Come back to me in 5 years.
Lowri picks: Jacques Greene - Another Girl (Lucky Me)
LM008 - ANOTHER GIRL by Jacques Greene
This track, released in March, tied together alot of strands for me: with its skippy 2-step beat, future garage topography and house sensibilities. It became a crossover classic if you will, blending nicely - as it does - with a huge array of tunes. There is a distinct lightness of touch in the shimmering production, and it has a drop so delicate you are hardly aware that it has been building to something.
It was a summery, sunlit anthem which I heard everywhere from festival fields to dark dancefloors. It will always remind me of 2011 and what an exceptional year for house music it was.
Click here for last week's Dancefloor Bombs.
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