One of the many reasons that house music has endured and expanded beyond its Chicago roots is that it can be so incredibly simple. The young Manchester producer Finn’s new album Everything Is Alright is a perfect example. Take album opener “Everything Is Alright”: There’s little more to it than a bluesy vocal sample, organ riff, and shuffling drum pattern. But in putting together these elements with heart, soul, and a sense of musical relativity, it feels as if Finn is tapping into the very essence of house music, where a single groove and a modest idea can go a long way.
Everything Is Alright is, more than anything, an exercise in taste and restraint—in choosing exactly the right elements for your song, then leaving well alone. So “A.Y.O.Y.O.” may highlight a sledgehammer-basic, four-note piano riff, which plays off against a chopped vocal sample and deep bass cushion. But it is striking how the riff adds just the right touch of measured melancholy, while the dub-inflected bass line skillfully lifts the bottom of the mix without dominating. Much like his friend and collaborator India Jordan, Finn is an especially dexterous sampler. On “I Don’t Know,” he uses a brief snatch of female vocal that he stretches like children’s putty into an angelic drone; on “Ere U R,” three snippets of a longer vocal line are pulled apart and put back together to create a brilliantly nagging hook.
In doing so, Finn calls back to American filter-house innovators Todd Terry and DJ Sneak and micro-sampling pioneers Marc Kinchen and Todd Edwards, producers who have long known the transformative power of the right sample. Being British, it is perhaps inevitable that Finn allows elements of UK garage and rave to sneak in, from the 2-step skip of “Everything Is Alright” to the touch of hardcore breaks and offbeat donk on the excellent “Things, Things, Things!” In its fresh-faced stylistic lunges, the record often summons the spirit of old-school British house music (think early Leftfield and pre-progressive Spooky), where hardcore was just starting to splinter off into its own sound but future techno god Carl Cox and jungle figurehead Grooverider could still share a DJ bill.
Far from being throwback, though, Finn’s music feels alive and eternal; its verve and imaginative spark make Everything Is Alright a record for house grandads and new ravers alike. There’s real personality to these beats. “Things, Things, Things!” and “Big Raver” are just that little bit stupid in their embrace of galloping-horse hardcore sonics, while “Never Leave” and “Forever Blue” show the mournful side of house, the wet Wednesday to “Big Raver”’s endless Saturday night. In the end, there is something rather charming in Finn’s ability to throw all of house history into the pot—here’s the classic Robin S. Korg organ sound, there’s the hands-in-the-air Italo-house piano riff—with no regard for self-consciousness or historical inhibition.
Would an older, more dyed-in-the-wool producer have been daring enough to pillage so obviously, albeit affectionately? Perhaps not. But doing so feels very much in the liberating spirit of house music in which Everything Is Alright was created. Finn made the nine tracks in an attempt to get back in touch with what he loved and cherished about dance music. With an open mind and lubricated hips, the album could work wonders for you too.
