[Wolf + Lamb]

While out in Tokyo, I once read a review in which a DJ was described as playing “insidious house” due to his ability to get said reviewer from “happily sitting with a drink to dancing thirty minutes later without knowing what happened.” The kind of deep, warm groove ridden sound which creeps under your skin and is as conducive to listening as it is to shaking it on the floor. Unfortunately I forget the DJ referred to, but the term captures the trend which has been prominent during the past few years. Injecting soul and an infectious warmth back into house as an anathema to glacial minimal sound that came before it. And it is this non-pejorative, soulful “insidious house” which Wolf + Lamb have made their signature and stock in trade. This collection of new projects, first releases and previously digital only tracks sounds strangely more like an EP pulled from a Best Of compilation rather than a showcase — each of the tracks presenting themselves as dusted down nu classics. Even the title Significant Others Too bears the hallmarks of a quiet confidence Wolf + Lamb have created for themselves over the past four years.

Gadi, one half of Wolf + Lamb, presents his new project Just One Night alongside Greg Paulus with “Dawn.” Taking the chance to sly in a funk-inspired slow burner replete with minor key pads and ominous blues trumpet tears lamenting the end of an evening, “Dawn” stands rather tall in its lack of reference in a package steeped in the house sounds of old. Zev’s “Forget The World” has vocalist Beckford evoking the spirit of Romanthony over a low-key skiffley bass line which could be pulled directly from the back catalog of the Strictly Rhythm vaults if it wasn’t for the thoroughly contemporary fidget-derived drops. Even Hot Natured Lee Foss’ addition, “Grinding,” and the collaboration between the aptly named Soul Clap and Le Coup on “I Want You,” are built around a fuzz covered sample has the same deep house-infused, disco flecked drive that one used to find on Glasgow Underground releases back in ’99. Although the provenance is distinctive, this collection is not derivative but remarkably subtle and suitably insidious.