Belong

Cologne producer and DJ Losoul’s (Peter Kremeier) debut album was released in 2000, and was a suitably restrained, terse, and tightly controlled summation of his hybrid house sound up to that point. While classified as a micro or minimal house artist and no doubt influential in those genres, many of his jams sounded a little more clubby, raw and banging than these genres tended to, and while this album showcases lots of carefully programmed, spacious, uneventful, minimal house tracks, he often used disco samples — albeit cut up, twisted, filtered etc. — and a more directly dancefloor-targeted production aesthetic to produce his hypnotic, relentless, abstract-funk 4/4 grooves. On Belong, Kremeier does this to superb effect, delivering rubbery alt-house vocal rollers, deconstructed disco loopers, airy impressionistic tech drifters and, in Sunbeams & The Rain, one of minimal house’s prettiest/most yearning musical moments.