Crue 4 (Crue)

Don't know much about Crue to be honest, I just happened to hit play while browsing the 'soon in' section at some obscure webshop when this popped up. Must have been a spot of divine intervention, as it's one of my favourite bits of house to have come out this year. I did some recon work on Crue * GIYF * and this is what I came up with:

• Crue seems to be run by a Dutch outfit of sorts, but there seems to be a link with Spain's Saft as well (holy shit, the internet can be a confusing place sometimes)
• They handstamp the shit out of their 10" vinyl-only releases but provide no intel on who's behind the tunes (Burial! Psych!)
• They've been at it since 2013 and only just put out their fourth release, so they're definitely not rushing things (This is a good thing in our book. Churning out 24 records in 12 months is a bad idea) 

I'll be brutally honest with you though. I checked the first three releases on the label and I didn't care for them one bit. I never liked that butch throwback house that was so in vogue a couple years ago (I honestly hate 90s chords more than I hate flutes in contemporary house music) and the first three offer exactly that: butch 90's throwback house. I'm sure it's well-produced and all, but those drums, hats and chords just makes my inner baby jesus weep. The fourth missive - on neat 10" purple vinyl no less - is quite a departure from that sound, as the tempo gets dropped considerably and things get taken straight to the disco. The A is a pitch-perfect and irresistible slice of choppy, sample-driven deephouse. I'm not going to bore you with a description, have a listen below (once you get past the 3 minute mark you'll have your creditcard ready to go)



On the B-Side, Brother Johnsons 'Stomp' gets stripped and chewed for a lovely loopy workout that cleverly uses only a few loops from this oversampled classic and mostly steers clear from the vocal.

Great record this, highly recommended! Gone from Juno, but Clone still has it in stock