Too tired to start Saturday with a bang. But awake enough to go for something bright and cheering in the form of prog house variants from Kerpner, and Hausman & Wynnwood.
Kerpner is a Stockholm based DJ and producer. He (I assume it’s a he) says he, “Found underground music while studying at university and has never left it since. Heavily influenced by old disco and house bangers!” Thankfully, Your Step isn’t a banger. But it is a lovely progressive house / deep house track.
Your Step comes over all bright eyed and bushy tailed. There are crisp opening beats and dreamily toned synths. This is a vision of dappled sunlight and ascending tones. It’s about the joy of life and crisp cold Spring air. The half seen sight of your breath in the morning and boiler vapour trails drifting upwards. A cheering sense of summer’s far off promise. Quite deliriously delightful.
Hausman & Wynnwood go for something where the prog house has a buzzy synthwave edge. Wynnwood says, “This is the first track that Devon (Hausman) and I wrote together, and my second release with Monstercat. The inspiration for the track came from the combination of our different styles and sounds and from being able to work together on the track in person in Boston.”
Catharsis is the track. The title means the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. But the root of the word is the Greek for purification or cleansing. And that’s pretty much what you get here. There’s a sense of sloughing off an older skin and the track emerges new and clean. The wordless slightly ethereal vocal element adds to that sense of wonder.
The opening has a slightly dirty bass synth edge to it all despite the vocal. But as the track grows and builds it becomes purer and brighter. This is positively uplifting in the clever phases that build one upon another. Never cliched, always clever and inventive. Salvation available here.