[Royal Oak]

Like some of his peers — Ibex and Delano Smith spring to mind — Reggie Dokes doesn’t release a lot of material, striving to keep the quality high instead of being prolific. He has certainly succeeded with his aim on this release, and it’s fair to say that Haiti, his second outing on Clone’s Royal Oak offshoot, is as close to perfection as modern dance music gets. A large part of its appeal is Dokes’ ability to take inspiration from his hometown’s past and it is this focus on seemingly old-fashioned elements like melodies and soulfulness that sets Haiti apart in a world of gray-scale house and techno.

The title track starts with steely, pummeling drums, which despite sounding intense are also imbued with an all too rare rawness and resonance. However, it’s the seductive piano keys, lush and melancholic, but equally uplifting and celebratory, that make “Haiti” so special. Indeed, this track again poses the age-old dilemma for critics, especially those working in electronic music: how does one articulate in words the joyous feeling that the cascading keys invoke? Such considerations also have to be made when assessing “God of House.” This time, the rhythm is more understated and Dokes’ uplifting keys take center stage. Combined with strings so sensuous, symphonic and delicate that they could easily be mistaken for a long-lost Derrick May track from his production period, these elements do, without sounding cliched, have something spiritual about them. It may be because of the track’s title or due to the arrangement’s looser, boogie rhythm; or maybe it has something to do with the soulful heritage Dokes is drawing on, from early house and techno back to his hometown’s Motown era, but “God” left even this writer, an avowed atheist, touched.

Finally, Clone deserves praise to entrust a relatively unknown act with remixing Dokes. Jozef Lemmens and Pierre van der Leeuw, aka Morning Factory from the Netherlands, have a tough act to follow but rise to the occasion admirably. The duo’s take on “Once Again” is dark and driving in a Chicago warehouse style — as opposed to the current techno meaning of that word — and despite the use of insistent filters, they find the space to leave those magical piano keys untouched. Dokes’ next appearance may be some time away, but in the interim, Haiti is sure to keep house lovers happy.

[Royal Oak]

I can’t think of a producer with a stranger idea of what constitutes house music than Atlanta’s Reggie Dokes. Like fellow Detroit expats Octave One, he gives listeners the sense that every off-kilter drum hit or plaintive piano chord has been placed with great care. Yet the melodic logic he’s employed since he leaped into production in 2001 has rarely made anything close to perfect sense. To be blunt, Dokes is positively all over the place, brewing up for his own Psychostasia imprint and labels like Philpot and Clone Loft Supreme a psychedelic suspension of weird chord changes and jarring phrase shifts. His Spectacle of Deepness EP on We Play House, a serious highlight of my 2009, even played like the hallucination of a madman. But what a gorgeously schizophrenic mess it was. His final transmission of 2009, “Untill Tomorrow” [sic] for Clone’s absurdly limited Royal Oak series (who knew you could press just fifty records?), finds him doubling back on the haziness of that release to produce a record on the whole more direct, more floor-oriented, and more obviously funky than most of his output to date. Unsurprisingly, however, those of you longing for those same old Rhodes vamps and Sascha Dive vocals might still want to look elsewhere.

On the titular A-side, Dokes places us in a tight spot between those oddly emotive, piano-driven melodies he’s made his name from and the kind of heavy percussion you’d associate more with UK funky than American deep. Dokes loves to play tricks with the soundstage — each element on the track, no matter where it’s been panned, vies for dominance over ever other simultaneously occurring element-and he crafts one of his tensest arrangements yet out of all these battling stabs. On the B, “Yellow Toe” finds Dokes winding down his BPMs slightly, but I’ll be damned if this groove isn’t more jarring, manic, and forcefully un-pretty than anything else on the slab. “The Beginnings of Ra,” however, lets all of this spiraling wackiness breathe a little. Like a malfunctioning robot doing a Theo Parrish impression, the track wanders and grooves through house tropes with a clumsiness that only makes it more endearing. For those house fans, like me, who have seized on Dokes as a breath of fresh air amidst the same old deepness, it’s precisely this mix of forceful groove, emotional exuberance, and borderline insanity that makes his records such a freaky pleasure. Keep us dancing, Reggie, and don’t you dare take your finger out of that electrical socket.

[Philpot]

Once again Philpot has delivered a distinctive record with its latest release which comes from Reggie Dokes, a relative unknown whose bio touts his connection to Detroit techno and Derrick May. Although hearing about Motor City pedigrees has become a bit boring, it is interesting and a little sad to hear just how distinctive the modern Detroit sound is compared to that of the European bozos who put out flaccid imitations of it. Although Dokes, the owner of Psychostasia Records, doesn’t have the mastery of his peers in the FXHE crew, his “Rain Redemptive Love EP” offers just as much unique personality. “Love” is a skeleton of off-kilter drums that open a huge amount of sonic space — so much so it sounds more like a break-beat made straight than anything else. Filling and even overflowing the broad scaffolding those drums erect are a variety of organic strings that go for broke melodically. “Love” keeps it short and sweet at barely four minutes of playing time (minus the intro and outro), but every moment is packed to the gills with pomp and yearning.

The rest of the tracks are more muted versions of the same idea. “Rain On Me” combines a gorgeous bouncing beat with a plundering bass line before being lost in overwrought piano/bassoon/whatever excess. “Black Children of the Ghetto” is much more restrained, meaning the vivid percussion is allowed to shine through. It’s a downcast affair, but its mood doesn’t feel persuasive in the end. That being said, “Love” is really something. Whether Dokes’ big, gauche melodrama on vinyl leaves you aching for banging techno tightness or singing along, there can be no doubt he’s swung for the fences on “Rain Redemptive Love EP.” A random sampling of his discography to date finds him to be an erratic producer at best, but here’s hoping this is a breakout record for him. Such a breakout would emphasize the relevance of energetic statements of emotion in dance music. In this way, despite its flaws, “Rain Redemptive Love” has put its finger on something absent in many records this year.