Loose Change
Do What You Want EP
Pleasure Unit/UK/12
Pleasure Unit, a go-to imprint for all manner of Balearia, takes a slight detour and serves up a three-tracker of disco-inflected house that wouldn’t sound of place in the discography of one Mr. Lee, David. This one should be out on wax come August 7th and comparisons aside, the title track, in its original form, is a very uplifting, extremely accessible, yet definitively underground, dance floor infiltrator and titillater. A bounding disco bass line that isn’t a million miles away from the groove of Moodymann’s “I Can’t Kick This Feeling When It Hits” is augmented with rousing, sweeping strings, little stabs of electric piano and a young lady intoning the title and also requesting that a particular need — upon which she fails to elaborate — be satisfied.

Oooh…er, this type of brazen overture to wanton carnality can only be tolerated when a tune is this rocking. And rocking it is.  And just when you think you’ve been completely roused, as well as aroused, along comes the dub, which adds some cavernous effects and chewy synth work that will ensure you’ll be rinsing the original and the dub, while playing another copy of the original backwards on a third turntable, as one does.

The EP closes with “Love Talk” a mid-tempo, breakbeat-driven funker that pits a loose, gamboling bass line against a tumbling piano melody. Halfway through this gem, after the breakdown, it morphs into a churning, oscillating, acidic, four-to-the-floor ubergroover that will menace the room into a proper, heads down, “lost it” session.

Pleasure Unit’s usual output is high-quality, Balearic type tracks, and beautiful house tracks, this EP indicates that there’s more to the label in terms of range and that is a great thing in the increasingly generic world of dance music. Christopher Orr