The typically chilled James Bright digs out his party pumps for a set of floor-fillers on Pete Herbert’s Music For Swimming Pools. Altitude is summery, feel-good, almost jazzy, house. Its playful handicapping percussion grounded by growling punk funk bass. Its keys constantly climbing, occasionally stopping off for cool rippling runs. Glaze rides some bulbous electro-boogie bottom-end. Beginning with a bleep melody it builds into something altogether more orchestral. Fractured Fairlight-like vocals fly about, but really it’s all about those upwardly spiraling strings. Somewhere Everywhere is chunkier, chugging. Boasting big bold piano, its b-line also bears a strong `80s influence. The Knight And The Sun is a driving modern disco number, which picks up a couple of remixes. The first comes from Pete, who tightens the track by stripping it back. Filtering and phasing the hooks. Sending in sampled chants, and adding copious cowbell. Leo Mas & Fabrice also, initially, concentrate on that cowbell clonk, before activating the arpeggios for some pumping, humping, Italo / Hi-Energy fun. Generating drama and tension by tactically teasing with the OG’s details, it’s effectively a dynamite dub. Listening I was thinking of Divine and Bobby “O” Orlando. Native Love tamed just a tad. Anyone remember that Fancy 12 – Come Inside? – that Oakenfold used to spin at Future and Spectrum? 

James Bright’s The Knight And The Sun E.P. is out now, on Music For Swimming Pools.