Never underestimate the power of a darkened room. Mainstream culture likes to think of dance music as little more than a hedonistic pastime, imagining nightclubs as mere places of entertainment—just another choice on popular culture’s lengthy, laminated menu of leisure options. But for many, dance clubs are places of freedom, of self-actualization, of becoming. They offer space for the margins to be reimagined as a new center, giving people a chance to encounter their truest selves on a crowded dancefloor.
The Chicago-raised DJ and producer Honey Dijon, who grew up on the city’s South Side and first snuck out to go clubbing when she was 12, is one of contemporary house music’s most compelling proponents of this view. Dijon witnessed house history firsthand in Chicago and developed her craft in New York; along the way, friends and mentors like Derrick Carter and Danny Tenaglia helped her harness her talents. But it was what she has called club life’s “cross-pollination of people and cultures”—a mix of genders, sexualities, races, ethnicities, and social classes—that taught her the most, along with a passionate belief in sound’s ability to connect people. The Best of Both Worlds, Dijon’s debut album, takes its inspiration from those experiences.
Suffused in radiant synthesizer and murmured vocals, the sultry opener “Love Muscle” sets the album’s tone. “I wake from a deep sleep,” intones Nomi Ruiz, a singer best known for her work with Hercules and Love Affair, sounding half-dazed, reluctant to return to daylight. The song is a kind of conscious dream—an analogue, perhaps, for dance music’s own fantasy world. Occasionally, these fantasies turn explicit: “Personal Slave” wraps heavy-breathing come-ons from Charles McCloud (a.k.a. Matrixxman) around ominous synth stabs, tri-tone riffs playing up a suggestion of danger. Mostly, though, the world the album constructs is one where all strains of house music co-exist on an equal plane.
Over a dozen songs (including a stellar, 12-minute remix of standout cut “Burn”), the album takes up the mantle of a number of classic styles: Taut, synth-riffing jack tracks; heart-in-mouth hip-house; emotive, piano-led deep house. Her DJ sets are famous for their range—her recent Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1 zig-zagged across Gino Soccio, Fela Kuti, Larry Heard, and Isolée—and The Best of Both Worlds stakes out similarly varied ground. “Burn” dances around a slinky, downbeat rhythm reminiscent of Frankie Knuckles’ slower jams; “Why” dips into a 95-BPM reggae groove that’s got Compass Point written all over it.
She can be tremendously playful: “Houze (Houze Rebuilt Mix),” featuring the funk-influenced producer and vocalist Seven Davis Jr., is a driving floor-filler modeled on the “bitch tracks” of ballroom culture. Davis taunts pretenders in a leering baritone (“Bitch that ain’t house/Get out my house”) while Dijon pounds away on the sampling pads, triggering a no-fucks-given stream of monosyllabic vocal shots over a chunky bass-and-drums groove. “Catch the Beat” is more streamlined, but its pleasures are no less boisterous, thanks to the Brooklyn rapper Cakes da Killa’s hiccupping, rapid-fire flow. The track is an obvious throwback to hip-house, a short-lived, high-energy fusion of rap and house from the late ’80s, but Cakes’ nimble delivery is less reminiscent of Fast Eddie or Tyree Cooper than it is Me’Shell NdegéOcello’s “If That’s Your Boyfriend (Li’l Freaky Remix),” a deliciously syncopated Lil Louis version from 1993. “Thunda” is another fun one, kitting out a high-stepping house groove with Latin cowbell rhythms and the kind of brass-synth stabs last heard on Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again in 1983.
Occasionally, Honey Dijon is happy to dig into a heads-down groove and simply get lost in the sound. “Lift” is a nicely enveloping dub-techno track in the tradition of her adopted home of Berlin. But the album’s most powerful moments are the ones that connect to house music’s emancipatory history. “Look Ahead,” a cover of a 1976 soul-disco cut by the group Aquarian Dream, also invokes Cajmere and Dajae’s spiritual-house anthem “Brighter Days” in its pianos-and-drums groove and its positive outlook (“Hold your head up/Don’t be discouraged/Better times are coming your way”). And it’s not just the lyrics; hope seems to radiate from the waveforms of the music itself, between the gorgeous multi-tracking of Sam Sparro’s voice and the deep, reassuring keys, where every chord in the sequence is somehow more satisfying than the last.
“State of Confusion” is cut from similar cloth, and, largely thanks to singer Joi Cardwell’s agile, deeply emotive voice, it’s an even more alchemical example of the relationship between music and personal liberation. “Burn,” likewise, goes to the heart of that connection: “Only when you see what can be done/Will you realize what you become/Only when you see what you can be/Will you realize that you are free,” sings Jason Walker, the song's guest vocalist, over a sensual, '90s-inspired groove. It’s a simple message, but as Honey Dijon shows throughout this fine debut, it’s one that goes to the deepest meaning of house music.
