Solee‘s Parquet label steps up for its 79th release with two new tracks from the man himself, plus remixes from Einmusik and Dan Caster.
Solee’s original version of ‘Ditzingen’ is a tech-houser, with rich percussion, a sparse, wonky bassline, atmospheric pads, and an insistent melody that really comes to the fore during the track’s two breakdowns. It manages to be fun and rather poignant at the same time, due to its combination of touching melodies and unusual palette of sounds. Overall, this is lovely, intelligent, distinctive house music from Solee.
Berlin’s Einmusik manages to turn in a remix here that’s even better than the original. Starting off very similar to the original, Einmusik keeps his version more stripped back, though with an incredibly compelling organ hook pulling the track forward. The track gets increasing lush as it heads towards the breakdown, where a glorious string-like melody and chimes await, before the track gets back to business, that organ line keeping you locked in until the climax brings the melodies back into play one more time. This is pretty much perfect.
Staying in Berlin, Dan Caster departs more radically from Solee’s original for his interpretation of ‘Ditzingen’, kicking off with trippy synths and ripples, and playing heavily with the chord shifts from the original. The highlight here is the breakdown and the sequence that follows it, which adds some nicely processed vocal sounds into the mix. This struck me as the least strong of the three versions of ‘Ditzingen’ on offer here, though it’s still quite nice and it does succeed in taking the track in a somewhat different direction.
It’s rare to get a B-side that’s better than the A, but I think Solee may have done just that here. ‘Esperanza’ is pure pleasure, from the moment its insanely catchy hook appears, through its old-school, twisted bassline, cool guitar licks, and memorable, instrument-shifting melodies, all the way to its stunning finale in the final two minutes. This is a total gem, and deserves to be heard often and loud throughout the summer months.
This is an excellent summery release from Solee and Parquet, with Einmusik’s remix and ‘Esperanza’ in particular providing two uplifting and beautiful examples of how house music should sound. Highly recommended. 8.5/10
‘Ditzingen’ is released 12/5/2014
