It’s hard to say whether Deep House is back, or simply never left and has now re-emerged into the mainstream’s conscience in the last couple of years. With its dreamy vocals hovering across a regulated bass line, Deep House has, like most fresh and distinctive sounds, a long history. Generally considered to have emerged in the ‘80s through the pioneering work of pleasingly named innovators Mr Fingers and Frankie Knuckles, Deep House became, and has once again become, the reserve of the musically inclined whose desire to dance doesn’t quite stretch to the full blown fist pump.
For those who refrain from the real, non-Revolutions based clubbing scene, dance music is easy to typecast as a somewhat shallow aphrodisiac for the pilled up raver, and impossible to consume in any other context.
Whilst this may be the case for the drop based rave scene, first popularised by The Prodigy and recently reworked by Skrillex, Deep House is a far subtler affair. Infused with a tonal sound most noticeable in the modal jazz progressions of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, post millennium Deep House layers subtle, muted riffs to form a relaxing air of dissonance. One of the most enchanting examples of this form is Chris Malinchak’s So Good To Me.
The problem, and the genius of Deep House, is this lean towards the gentle. For some, the refusal of artists such as Cyril Hahn and Roger Sanchez to guild their climaxes with anything more than a chord change, or at particularly left field moments, an extra high-hat, renders Deep House a dull affair. For the increasingly numbered minority however, consistency in tempo and mood allows the properly configured person to drift to the fringes of a trance like state.
By way of comparison, if the live band is your typical Hollywood comedy, funny at the beginning, dull in the middle and heart warming at the end, Deep House is Simon Amstell’s Grandma’s House; fashionably underplayed but quietly brilliant throughout.
Despite York not being the most reliable barometer of musical success (the small music scene rendering Milli Vanilli and Bangers and Mash the only viable choices for the discerning jiver), the popularity of Deep House is undeniably on the rise. Whether or not the idea of standing next to the heart-regulating speakers of Fibbers on a Wednesday night is your idea of fun, Deep House is most definitely worth its weight in increasingly valuable music gold.
MILO BOYD