- A house music legend opens his vault of archival recordings.
- From acid to deep house, Larry Heard is inarguably one of the best to ever do it. This makes Vault Sessions, a new series of Mr. Fingers outtakes from over the years, a major event. It stands to reason that even the tracks Heard left on the cutting room floor will stand out amid the thousands he inspired.
Vault Sessions 1 pulls from various phases of the Fingers project, which launched with seminal tracks like "Mystery Of Love" and "Can You Feel It" in the mid-'80s, progressed onto a major-label affiliated quiet storm-style project in the '90s and returned in the late '10s with Mr. Fingers 2016 and Cerebral Hemispheres. The first tune, "Chains," is an outtake from one of the few perfect house albums, Fingers Inc.'s Another Side, and is worth the price of admission alone. "To this day, we are not quite sure why this selection was not included on the project," reads the press release. Indeed, Ron Wilson's pent-up vocals, combined with the deep and spiky Mr. Fingers vibe, puts this one in the rarified territory of classics like "Feeling Sleazy."
"Electronic Debris" mixes Heard's dreamy, sci-fi R&B sound with an organ stab that nods to classic East Coast house. "Saspence" and "Nyte Light" recall well-known Heard cuts: the former's octave-jumping bassline harks back to "What About This Love," while the delicate 303 lines of the latter echo recent material like "Outer Acid." If these four tracks are anything to go by, this upcoming raft of archival material will make a valuable addition to a legendary body of work.
TracklistA1 Chains feat. Ron Wilson
A2 Electronic Debris
B1 Saspence
B2 Nyte Light