L.B. Dub Corp - Saturn To Home

In 2024, after two solid decades of primitive house revivalism (not to mention the original go round), I would have been sceptical of the prospect that I could be so intoxicated by an album of... primitive house.

But Saturn To Home nevertheless is one of the absolute best things I've heard this year, not by seeking to transcend that label, but instead by burrowing down, depicting this vast and cavernous underworld that exists beneath the street level of late 80s/early 90s house and techno. Deliberately rigorous and ruthless at all times, it is nevertheless consistently expansive and cinematic, and I think it's the way the music correctly recognises that the seeming opposition between those purported poles only exists in the mind - it's entirely possible to simultaneously knock out the street lights at both ends of the street, not just once, but again and again.

The title track, with Miss Kittin, is a high-drama greenhouse, like Jungle Wonz' "The Jungle" blown up to soundtrack a Bond film. "You Got Me", with Robert Owens, is a classic paranoid/yearning Robert Owens house track a la "Break Down The Walls", only it gets dubbier and weirder as it goes, like it's coiling in on itself incessantly in an expression of some kind of obsessive-repulsive recursive fixation. "Your Love" is just a peaktime banger, slamming riffs that don't need to do anything other than slam you to justify themselves a la Basement Jaxx's "Flylife", though it still has swirling strings and whispered on-the-edge-of-consciousness vocals just to maintain the general vibe of needless largesse. "Golden Star" is the archetypal slower track four, but slower doesn't mean calmer, this is hammering psychedelic Sherwood-esque dub. "Only The Good Times" and "Krank" follow with heads down but still galactically huge house and techno bangers respectively - the latter in particular just ridiculously huge. "No Trouble In Paradise" features Paul St. Hilaire on vocals and is exactly what you would expect, swirling dub-house that keeps rising and rising like you're being propelled towards a razor sharp exhaust fan by buoyant steam. "Cloak and Dagger" brings it all together with boiling techno overlaid with excited splashy percussive drums - it doesn't really feel like a last track because it's too hyper, but I'm not sure that this artist has another speed.

TLDR version: imagine if Bobby Konders had kept making house music and recorded a collaboration with DJ Pierre and Juan Atkins in 1995.

i had already been on a massive luke slater kick when i discovered the existence of this album the other day and yes it kicks

Oh wow I didn’t even realise this was a Luke Slater side project but that makes perfect sense