album revieW

hauswerks

‘Tribe And Tested’ (303Lovers)

Fans of Made To Play, Anabatic or Dirtybird’s chunky house beats would do well to check out Hauswerks, aka the surprisingly un- German sounding Colin Barratt. The studio skills behind a wide range of other artists, his productions have appeared on labels including Berwick Street Records and John Acquaviva’s ‘Definitive’. ‘Tribe and Tested’, as it says on the tin, sees Hauswerks turn dance anthropologist,

gathering every variation of percussion and chanting known to man, and attaching it to the kind of grooving bass that you can almost feel massaging your lungs. ‘Zulu’ adds electronic bleeps to ecstatic tribal yelps, ‘The Whistler’ appropriates Balkan whistling (as well as a Claude VonStroke song title) for a piece of driving gypsy funk, and ‘Africained’ opts for deeper, more syncopated

rhythm over murmuring voices.

The warm thumb piano of ‘Mambana’ meanwhile is one of two tracks featuring Rosie Romero, with Gaz James and Riley And Durrant collaborating elsewhere. It might not push any boundaries, instead tapping into the current prevailing sound, but there’s no doubt that this is an album of house that certainly works. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10