LOST TRACKS VOL.2 by LARS BARTKUHN

Record Of The Week W29 by Rogier Oostlander.

"Ever since his first releases as part of the Needs (Not Wants) collective (with his older brother Marek and DJ Yannick) Lars Bartkuhn has been one of the brightest lights in the international deephouse scene, but simply calling his music ‘deephouse’ wouldn’t do him any justice.

A multi-instrumentalist by ear and a jazzcat by heart, Bartkuhn always infuses his house compositions with enough musicality to stand out from the crowd of modern deephouse producers - broken beat, jazz, funk, fusion, ambient influences, it’s all in there somewhere without ever sounding contrived or passé. Bartkuhn has a natural gift for natural sound setting him apart from the rest.

On ‘Lost Tracks Part 2’ (the follow-up to 2003’s first part that was just credited to ‘Needs’) he delves deep into the archives to come up with a beautifully sultry house scenery that easily ranks among his best work to date - warm pads, swirling melodies and hypnotic percussion sounding like a sunlit ride to a secret beach on a remote island somewhere. Beautiful, timeless stuff.

Sultriness is also key on ‘The Chase’, a bouncy but smooth broken house fusion affair with freaky seventies-inspired jazzfunk keys, funky wah wah licks and a driving nu jazz groove.

Don’t be misled by the title of this EP - ‘Lost Tracks 2’ is nothing but premium material."