- Opening up a night is an esoteric art. Play too hard, and you potentially kill things for the next DJ. Play too soft, and you potentially kill the party altogether. The problem isn't just in a DJ's skills, though: It's also in the releases. Few DJs want to be pigeonholed as an opener; few producers want to be pigeonholed as someone who releases records that are only fit for the warm-up.
That's why records like Jouem's Levitation EP are so welcome. A two-tracker of remarkable, distinctive and sloooow house, it's so obviously aimed for the warm-up that you have to turn these tracks up to 45 RPM just to get them to 114 BPM. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of things going on: Jouem fits in enough material here to keep your interest throughout, but they move so glacially that you tend to not notice. Shakers, mellow pads, dubby beats: They all work towards doing exactly what it says in the run-in groove: "distort time."
TracklistA Levitation
B Day Lily