Tiago Walter – Back To Basics

The "Back To Basics" house EP has become quite the guileful Jungian dance music archetype: the trope signals the crucial career moment when a somewhat seasoned DJ and producer takes a welcome break from the often tiring complexities of their crafts and temporarily takes on a more 'basic' approach, simplifying their sound and reminding themselves of the constituent nuts and bolts of their chosen genre - in this case house music - without which they would be nothing. So too is house music, at least in Tiago Walter's case, itself something of a litmus test for level-headedness on the artist's part; how far can they take the least effected or embellished form of the sound, and make something compelling out of it, despite the (seeming) coolness; the sense of measured composure, the apparent under-extension of effort? Yet despite the ostensible aim for 'basics', there are still subtle details worked into this one on which only keener ears might pick up - be these the snappy tails of each drum transient or organ-hit of 'M1 Bounce', or the seeming effortless but in actual fact calculatedly measured quality of the core vocal sample on 'I Hear You Call My Name' - that render it totally hot, beneath the cool veneer.