English house producer Matthew Herbert has never bettered Around The House, his second full-length and first with vocalist Dani Siciliano. What he achieved here was something relatively rare; a convincingly rounded ‘home listening’ house album that was as conceptually coherent as it was lush and delightful on the ears. The music is threaded together by micro-samples that are as rigorously avant as electro-acoustics, but they nestle gorgeously alongside weightless deep house, gently teased jazz interludes, and a clutch of songs that are as mesmeric and entrancing as they are hypnotically pop: “Going Round,” “So Now,” “Never Give Up.” It’s his masterpiece.

– Jon Dale