This 1989 Chicago House album wasn’t originally intended to be an album project at all. It’s compiled from the first two 12” releases by Eric Lewis and Merwyn Sanders and although not particularly well known outside of house music circles, it turned out to be one of the more influential house music albums of the period. Melodic, transportive, inward-looking and innovative, it was made a few years into the house music era and was one of a few key early efforts to develop the genre further, away from simple dancefloor-targeted beats’n’bass tracks to a more immersive, introspective and musically detailed aesthetic. It’s simple house music, based on tough Roland 909 and 707 beats, but they managed to imbue their productions with a stately, slightly detached enigma and it now sounds strangely mournful and pensive. It’s Chicago house but its disassociated mood sounds like it was influenced by what Detroit’s techno innovators had been up to. A mysterious, distant, affecting alternative version of the early Chicago House sound.