Record Review: Andrés III

I’ve long been a fan of the work of Andrés; in fact, he was one of those “holy grail” type producers when I first started buying lots of house and techno a decade ago. His tracks have always been heavily sample based, but originally they were much more tracked out and minimal compared to what he is doing today. Recently, it seems that the style of his hiphop records as DJ Dez (all of which are awesome as well) has seeped into the music he releases as Andrés.

On his album Andrés II from a few years back, J Dilla’s Donuts also seemed to be a heavy influence. Adopting more of a collage approach that worked better on the CD than the two vinyls released, Andrés mashed together boogie, funk, disco, soul, jazz, hiphop, house, and more into a brilliant whole that seems to appeal to people well outside of the usual house music crowd.

The six tracks included on III seem as though they would work well in a similar context. Aside from the dancefloor house of “Be Free Baby”, the remaining tracks are all slow but beautiful jams that seem to be a more advanced version of the Dez style of production. “Outta This Earth” is the highlight of these tracks for me, but all of them are cool albeit kinda short. I hope that more vinyl as well as a CD done in that collage style are forthcoming, which would give these tracks further context than they receive here.

Also worth checking out is the Michael Jackson sampling record recently released under the Dez Andrés name. I haven’t seen much written about this record, but as with almost everything he’s done, it’s a funky-ass dancefloor bomb. My favorite is “A Time to Boogie” which uses “Blame It On The Boogie” to great effect. “As We Rock On”, meanwhile, jacks “Rock With You” as you might have guessed. For those who aren’t big MJ fans, instrumentals of both are included!