House of Woo is a counter swoosh to big-box house music, handmade and unbrandable, a curve-ball from left-field thrown with muscle.
House of Woo is Maxmillion Dunbar’s glossy but substantive love letter to his best girl, although it also sounds like a plausible name for a Chinese restaurant (and the opening track, “Slave to the Vibe,” does have a little Kung Pao tang). Born Andrew Field-Pickering and one half of house duo Beautiful Swimmers, Dunbar explains that he enjoys making tracks by “sticking on a loop forever, letting it live and breathe as long as it needs to,…balanced, floating in the air.” But while performing that balancing act, he is busy working in the details with blowtorch and filigree brush.
This album is all shiny, curvy, chrome-plated surfaces and brash as its dayglo packaging. Most of the first ten tracks each deserve their own, extended twelve-inch vinyl single. Dunbar cherry-picks disco gestures and proceeds to abrogate them with intelligence and discretion. “The Figurine (Nod Mix)” is laidback and softcore porny, “Inca Tags” conspiratorial. “Loving the Drift World Taste” opens ecstatically, bubbles elatedly and just keep soaring. “Peeling an Orange in One Piece” sidles up next to you with the most smarmy but ultimately ingratiating New Age panflute. The final three tracks—”Kangaroo,” “The Drift” and “Shampoo”—are dubbed out and experimental in nature, which is no bad thing, though they haven’t the torque of the dancefloor guile that proceeded them.
House of Woo is a counter swoosh to big-box house music, handmade and unbrandable, a curve-ball from left-field thrown with muscle.
House of Woo is available on Rvng Intl.
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