If last year's was Julio Bashmore's, then 2012 may well belong to Huxley, so it only seems fair to allow him to end it with another big house contender. Tsuba obviously shares that confidence, if it's enlisting of '90s house legend MK on remix duties is anything to go by.
One of the features of Huxley's output has been an ability to nail a nagging hook with just a smear of a vocal, a trait he maintains on "No Matter What." Glittering, heavily delayed pads check in early on and are reprised throughout while percussive clicks dovetail neatly with the pogo bounce of the rubbery bassline. If the former pays its dues to trad house then "Can't Sleep," with its doleful, compressed synth horn stabs—not a million miles away from Sei A's "Hawk Tone" from earlier this year—owes more of a debt to the bass/funky/garage alliance.
Which brings us neatly onto MK's two sweeps of "No Matter What." Both the dub and main mix—frankly, there's no more than a Rizla paper's length between the two—propels you back to the time when Marc Kinchen set the standards for house production. Here he salami slices the vocal, putting it back together in contrary order, creating a brand new stuttering, percussive element of its own, to which Kinchen adds a monosyllabic chiming synth line. Neat and tidy enough, but overall it's a case of apprentice outpointing the sorcerer.
