- Warm, vintage house music with a little bit of footwork.
- Long-time Berlin DJ Cinthie is both a student and teacher of house music. Her sets, like her excellent DJ-Kicks mix from last year, reflect the knowledge and experience she's built up over the decades, and her new EP for Dam Swindle's Heist label radiates with the warmth of someone who knows the genre inside-out. Lead track "Won't U Take Me" is a genre exercise—think Cajual by way of Black Box's "Everybody Everybody"—but it's done so perfectly, so sumptuously, that it might as well be one of the classic records she's referencing. Skippy, Chandleresque hi-hats, a hop-scotching bassline and a looping vocal make for the kind of familiar tune that'll have you mouthing the hook on the dance floor before you even realize it.
Cinthie plays to contemporary tastes on "Piano Heaven," which is both retro and flamboyantly modern, thanks to siren-like synths that seem designed to trigger the fog blasts or pyrotechnics on a big festival stage. It would be absurd if the track weren't so convincing, the titular piano lead appropriately ascending into the stratosphere. (St. David provides a more grounded remix, washing the track with a layer of reverb and fastening it to a bassline that wouldn't be out of place in a Dyed Soundorom set.) Things get really unusual with "Masterplan," a track that marries the lush textures of "Won't U Take Me" with a trap-infused footwork rhythm and a rather distracting vocal. It doesn't quite work, but it feels like an adventurous update on old-school hip-house, rounding off an EP that otherwise does everything perfectly.
Tracklist01. Won't U Take Me
02. Piano Heaven
03. Masterplan
04. Piano Heaven (St. David Remix)