Finding 'Stay Ready' on a club compilation is a happy anomaly: Hercules & Love Affair, the rotating-cast project Andy Butler has run since 2004 — the one that took off with 'Blind' alongside Anohni — usually lives in album format and operates out of Ghent these days. Here it sits fourth, 5:55 at 125 BPM in Gb minor, right where the record changes weather: the first three cuts stay in major keys, the last two drop into minor territory.
One step earlier comes 'The Boogie', and the name says it all: Kai Alcé was born in New York, schooled as a teenager at Detroit's Music Institute, and has been based in Atlanta since the nineties, where he founded NDATL — an acronym for his three cities — with the stated mission of preserving house music's Black foundations. His cut sits at the exact center of the set: 5:17 at 127 BPM in C major, the balance point of a record that slides from 134 down to 124 BPM without a single rough jump.
The closer stays in the family. 'Set the Scene' pairs Soul Clap — Eli Goldstein and Charles Levine, the men behind the label — with Baronhawk Poitier, and it is both the longest cut (6:28) and the slowest (124 BPM) of the five. There is history in that: House Of EFUNK was born in May 2014, in the middle of Detroit's Movement festival, as an outlet for the duo's club tracks, and each volume in the series showcases artists from their annual party at TV Lounge. Having the hosts turn off the lights with the longest-running track is brand coherence at its purest.
The other two cuts play precise roles: 'Revolution' by Lauren Flax and Liz Wight opens the record as its lone electro front at 134 BPM, the highest tempo here, while JMT's 'Black Magic Touch' is the short sharp shot of the batch at 4:05. But the weight rests on that central trio: a Detroit-schooled veteran, a house-disco project born in New York, and the hosts themselves. Rarely do five tracks map a label's family ties this clearly.
Sources: 5 Mag · Bandcamp · Wikipedia
