20 key Kerri Chandler productions

The beginning was modest. Kerri’s first release (on his first label) initially had a run of 500 copies. Jabbing strings lead into a thudding kick-drum and a bumping analogue bassline, while Chevelle provides the not-always-entirely-in-tune, gospel-inspired vocals. Tony Humphries, then one of NY house’s biggest DJs, picked up on it, and it was signed to Atlantic, which released it as Three Generations, establishing Kerri Chandler as a force in the house scene.

If ‘Super Lover’ was a rough-hewn thing, ‘A Basement, A Red Light And A Feeling’ was perfectly formed. The six tracks were credited to different artists, but Kerri Chandler had a hand in all of them. ‘I Loved You’ by Grampa is brilliantly odd: a male vocalist seems to have Paul Robeson’s ‘Ol Man River’ in mind as he croons over lilting pianos. Along with the other five tracks, it’s sublime, the high-water mark of Kerri’s early years, and one of the high points of New York house, full stop.

Kerri’s roots may be in soulful house, but he’s always had a thing for thuddy kick drums, too. ‘Track 1’ from the ‘Atmosphere’ EP, is a case in point. The pounding beat wouldn’t be out of place on a techno record, then the slinky keyboard riff slides in, then a sax, a delicious contrast of rough and smooth. Perhaps to emphasise this isn’t your average deep house tune, his finishing touch – seldom used in dance music – is a tinkling of harpsichord. If you only have room for one KC track in your collection, it must be this.

Chandler has made series of entries into the pantheon of dancefloor grooves that their producers couldn’t be bothered to name. This is one of his best. ‘Three’ (out of four) is a filtered disco banger that has a touch of Armand Van Helden about it. The label instructed, “Warning: play loud.” Raw, dirty house music strictly for club use, in other words. Three more EPs in the same vein followed.

Chandler’s music is often described as having a spiritual quality, and never more so than the tracks he released on his friend Jerome Sydenham’s Ibadan label. This collaboration is built around New York DJ/producer Joe Claussell’s Puerto Rican heritage – marimbas, Latin rhythms, Spanish guitar – which Chandler underpins with a restrained house groove. As Balearic as it gets.

In the mid-to late-90s, as well as making a string of deep house landmarks, Kerri Chandler also released some influential garage tracks such as ‘Rain’, which appeared on this four-track EP. The classic garage contrast of silky-smooth keyboards, loud, hissing hi-hats and a soulful vocal are in the same skippety vein as Masters At Work. It still gets played on UK garage pirate radio.

NY distributor pal Linda is a pretty big deal in Chandler’s life: there are four EPs named for her. The best of the four cuts here is ‘Moving In’, which must be one of the most uplifting house tunes ever. A synth riff as clear and bright as spring sunshine in Central Park just keeps on piling on the good vibes, as Kerri dusts the track with tinkles of piano and snippets of female vocal. It’s impossible not to be filled with the joy of life after listening to this.

After a string of releases on Ibadan, Chandler was a natural choice to remix ‘Truth Don Die’ by Fela Kuti’s son, Femi. It proved to be the inspiration for this Afrobeat dalliance. Afro bass and guitar loop around one another endlessly, horns blare and someone un-named contributes hypeman vocal interjections. Afrobeat-inspired house doesn’t get any better than this.

The ebb and flow of musical fashion was not on Chandler’s side when it came to his second album. In 2003, post-electroclash, clubland was all about techno, electro and haircuts. House die-hards knew ‘Trionopshere’ was a gem, but it didn’t get the attention it deserved. In fact, it was way ahead of its time. The jacking beats and thick sub-bass on ‘What Is 6.23’ still sound sharp, and the euphoric vocal house of ‘On My Way’ and pounding ‘Tribe Of The Night’ haven’t dated. ‘Trionosphere’ is now an acknowledged classic.

Chandler didn’t transition from deep house don to rocking DC10 so much as the people at DC10 and clubs like it realised his hard-edged deep house was, in fact, in line with their taste. ‘Bar A Thym’ is a case in point. The thudding kicks, tick-tock hi-hats and that driving synth riff that seems to keep building higher and higher are a logical progression from the ‘Atmosphere EP’, entirely in keeping with his roots. Those roots are banging underground party music. Two worlds collide.

Not a noted producer of acid house, Chandler nonetheless turns in an electrifying eight-minute squelchfest here. The beat chugs, a keyboard flashes, then he sets a 303 rolling over the top, with toms adding an authentic 1988 touch. “So tell me, when was the first time you heard acid?” he asks. The Warehouse? Zanzibar? Ministry Of Sound? Some place in Scotland? A tangential gem, from a time when Kerri Chandler was experimenting with different vibes.

As deep house was coming back into fashion in the late ’00s, Chandler released this magnum opus to remind everyone how revelatory it could be. A narcotic haze of swirling wah-wah synths, echoing bass and click-clack percussion are the backdrop for an address on the state of the house music nation. “I see you must be blind to the music … You can’t lie to house music … Now you’re lost in your own hype, in the oblivion.” The custodian of house’s soul has spoken. Listen and understand.

The reason Chandler punched through his deep house legacy and connected with a new generation was tracks like this. ‘The Invaders (The Panic)’ is a slow burn of clipped drum kicks and pattering clicks with a synth murmuring in the distance. As it pulls into earshot it opens up and evolves into a thing of shiny, electro-house genius before morphing again into a storm of pew-pew lasers. The sound of Kerri capturing the house zeitgeist and making it his own. See also his third album, of the same name.

The two tracks here see Chandler pushing the themes explored on ‘Computer Games’ a stage further. ‘Pong’ is particularly good. The digital spirals are a deliberate echo of the 1984 Balearic classic ‘E2-E4’ by Manuel Gottsching. Taken together with the tribal percussion, you get a strong sense that he had Ibiza in mind when he wrote this tune.

Like ‘Oblivion’, the A-side on the fourth ‘Thing For Linda’, ‘House Is House’ is an open letter to the dance community. “Tell me why some of the best DJs/producers I know are still in their bedroom, but you have some superstar DJs who can’t even turn on one machine,” he muses over a sparse, jacking groove. On the flip he recalls sharing a lift with a mother and son, the son asking, ‘Mommy, what’s a record?’ – the title of the track. Printed around the edge of the centre label, it says: ‘Records are forever held on to, files are not’.

The infamous 2013 incident when Chandler subjected a Paris club crowd to a five-minute rant, saying he wasn’t going to play “commercial shit”, has passed into dance music folklore. Suffice to say, he’s always been keen to stay true to his roots. In 2011, after a nine-year break, he rebooted Madhouse, the label on which he released ‘A Basement, A Red Light And A Feeling’, proof that he hadn’t sold out. The lead track, ‘From Day One’, is uncompromising – kick drums like body blows, minimal, crystalline synths and not much else.

Hot on the heels of the ‘Ozone’ EP came these four tracks, also on Madhouse. Skip the first, ‘We Are Here (Kaoz Stressin Me)’, which sees Chandler complaining about his resurgent success. Instead, cut straight to the DC10 mix of ‘So It Begins Again’, a tribal workout coloured with droning strings and a choir of dark harmonies. It perfectly captures the spirit of the place it was written for.

Chandler’s links to Berlin go deeper than just playing the city’s clubs. His long-term friend and sometime collaborator Jerome Sydenham started his Ibadan label in New York but then moved it to the German capital. He features on the Afrobeat-flavoured ‘Mama’, which first appeared as an exclusive on Chandler’s excellent instalment of the Watergate mix series. The standalone release also includes the acidy ‘Think Of Something’.

The ‘Atmosphere EP’ from 1993 is the itch Chandler keeps on scratching. As well as the original, he released two alternate versions as ‘The Lost Dubs’ in 1998, and then another one on ‘Atmospheric Beats’ in 2000. Here he returns to it again, this time giving it the full vocal treatment, with Troy Denari delivering a positive vibes message over the familiar backing. Surely the last word on the matter – but given how strongly Kerri feels about this tune, who knows?

The title refers to a 25-minute 1973 classical piece by Steve Reich, revered by electronic pioneers for the abstract repetition in his music. For just short of 10 minutes a two-second, five-note piano riff spins and spins, mirrored first by building strings, then by a synth riff, the three fading in and out, dancing around each other. It takes a deep understanding of music to turn something so simple into a lush, complex soundscape that works on its own terms, and also retains the spirit of the track from which it borrows. An instant classic.