Albums
San Francisco’s Dave Aju injects his cross-genre dance music with a soulful élan that European artists often fail to nail. That’s not to say that ‘Heirlooms’ is full of syrupy, uplifting confections – this is street-tough tech-house, happy to wear its hip hop, jazz, disco and Latin influences on its sleeve. ‘Rise’ opens with muted, smoky horns before tripping into spacey, slo-mo house, while ‘Brown & Blue’ dons Speedos and parties down Copacabana. Like Matthew Dear, Aju lends his mellifluous tenor to several of the tracks, notably on the coda of ‘To Be Free’. The highlight of an impressive album is ‘All Together Now’, a twisted disco jam thrashed to an inch of its life by a violent sonic slap.
File under Jazzy, funk-filled, hip hop-tinged, deep and techy house
Download ‘All Together Now’, ‘Away Away’, ‘Brown & Blue’
Like this? Try DJ Sneak ‘Fabric 62’ (Fabric Recordings)
