- Three hours of immaculate big-room house, recorded at 24 different clubs around the world.
- It took me a long time to write this review of the new Kerri Chandler album, because the new Kerri Chandler album is very long. Three hours and two minutes, to be exact. It's almost too much of a good thing, though it's hard to imagine having too much Kerri Chandler in your life. The aptly-named Spaces And Places pays tribute to the New Jersey artist's favorite clubs across the world, with a twist—the tracks were mostly actually recorded at the venues, in an effort to capture what Chandler sees as the unique atmosphere of each. (He also mixed the album in Dolby Atmos in an effort to make the LP even more immersive, though I'd say that's more gimmick than value at this point.) Though the album comes with a concept, the 24 tracks on Spaces And Places are business as usual: lavish deep house, lofty vocals, perfect hi-hats and that little bit of swing that has made Chandler one of house music's most beloved producers since the early '90s.
The album begins with "Back To Earth," a tribute to Queens' Knockdown Center with vocalist Aaron Braxton Jr. If you use your imagination, you can imagine the massive hall and worn brickwork in the huge reverb trails, the way the piano sounds like it's ringing throughout a vast space. The vocal is an uplifting tale of gratitude and self-affirmation, though any Chandler fan will zoom in on the rhythm section, which is, surprise surprise, perfect: springy hi-hats that dodge the closed-fist punch of the snares, and a curlicue of a bassline. It's also rather big-room in its expanse and its loud, brash mixdown, but that's the nature of the spaces and places that Chandler plays these days, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.
While the album stays true to Chandler's established sound with no radical changes, you can hear how the individual clubs may have inspired certain songs. The unusually stiff but still bouncy "Sunrise (Watergate)" has a hint of techno steel to it, while "Subbie (Sub Club)" centers around a catchy vocal sample with a slight twist that hints at the early UK garage that Chandler helped inspire in the first place. Then again, I'm not sure exactly what the throwback organ house of "You Get Lost In It (The Warehouse Project)" has to do with the titular Manchester mega-party, though it's one of the LP's most pleasing tracks, with more of those jigsaw-puzzle percussive pattern, a simple chord vamp and a deliciously earnest vocal from Lady Linn. It could've been ripped from an Ibadan record circa '97, and that's a pretty strong compliment.
There are some admittedly silly moments here, like "Dirty (Rex)," which is edited by DJ Deep and features some lovably goofy synth guitar, though the fundamentals of the track are otherwise great. Ditto for the "Disco Version" of "Kaiku (Kaiku)," with its Nile Rodgers-style guitar stabs and absolutely bonkers violin soloing. Is it cheesy? No doubt. Is it fun? It sure is. As is the absurd build up of "Keep One (But Do It Again)," a tribute to Cork's Sir Henry's, which actually feels like an Ibiza moment, with dramatic crescendoes worthy of pyrotechnics.
Presented in such an unwieldy way—the four separate "samplers" are probably a better path to approach these tracks—Spaces And Places has made me wonder "who is this for" more than once. I doubt many people are going to be listening to three hours of full-length house tracks at once. So is it for DJs to pull favorites from? Or is it for diehard fans to dive into like a swimming pool filled with champagne? Not every track is brilliant, but there are so many of them, and the good ones tend to make up for the dead weight around them. Spaces And Places, is also admittedly not offering much new from the house maestro, but the music's global outlook and who's-who survey of nightclubs remind that us that Kerri Chandler is now a worldwide superstar, and not just the hero of New Jersey house.
So maybe Spaces And Places is the sound of that New Jersey sound getting its dues, not via appropriation, but through the man who created the sound. There would be no garage, no Bicep, no deep house without Kerri Chandler, and the music here is in dialogue with both the past and future. With endless vocal hooks, heart-in-mouth breakdowns and tons of live instrumentation, Chandler is generous with melody, which is why he's as renowned with young people at places like The Warehouse Project as he is with old heads who have been collecting his records for decades. And you can hear a throughline to the constantly growing Afro house and amapiano scenes in some of these vocal tracks and their low, sumptuous grooves. Spaces And Places, then, isn't so much Chandler paying tribute to individual clubs as surveying his kingdom, a master at his craft blessing each venue with its very own Chandler groove, a sound that feels both eternal and comforting, and will for a long time.
Tracklist01. Never Thought (Main Vocal Mix) feat. Sunchilde [Printworks]
02. Milan (Full Sax Mix) - feat. Mauro Capitale [Magazzini General]
03. Kerri Chandler feat. Lady Linn - You Get Lost In
It (Full Vocal Main Mix) [The Warehouse Project]
04. Kerri Chandler feat. Dreamer G - Hurry Up (Kerri's Again End Vocal Mix) [Ministry of Sound]
05. Tenacity (Main Vocal Mix) feat. Bluey Robinson [Output NYC]
06. Kaiku (Disco Version) feat. Yaniel & Patrick Mangan [Kaiku]
07. Industria [Industria]
08. Dirty (DJ Deep's Son and Dad Edit 6) [Rex]
09. I See (Full Mix) [Razzmatazz]
10. The Piano Thing [Live] [Eathos]
11. Sunrise [Watergate]
12. See the Light (Original Long Vocoder Vocal Mix) [Lux Frágil]
13. Sun of Sound (Vocal Mix) feat. Troy Denari [Plan B]
14. Keep One (But Do It Again) [Sir Henrys]
15. Who Knows (Media Mix Vocal Mix) feat.
Dora Dora [Barbarellas]
16. Let it (Kerri's Original Full Vocal Mix) [Basic Club]
17. Change Your Mind (Full Vocal) feat. Troy Denari [District 8]
18. Joyful Life (Full Vocal Mix) feat. Mona Lee [De
Marktkantine]
19. The Morning Heat (Main Mix) feat. Nadir Simon [La Grange]
20. The Calling [Club Qu]
21. Feelin' Red (Pull The 9 Out Mix) [DC10]
22. Subbie (The Jackpot Mix) [Sub Club]
23. The Box Frame [Halcyon]
24. Back to Earth (Find Your Peace) feat. Aaron Braxton [Knockdown Center]