Atmosfear

GU’s debut 1997 album is a showcase for a producer particularly adept at integrating jazz fusion playing and instrumentation into Chicago House, and consists of eight meticulously assembled deep house tracks that do exactly that. In doing so, it’s an album that generates and communicates nuanced, subtle moods, the high-level playing and clever, intricate arrangements elevating the form. Any producer can use a sax sample pack or rip a mid-seventies Blue Note drum break, but Atmosfear’s tracks make rigid drum box rhythms and live Latin percussion gel as though they came from the same source, and easily makes undulating synth chords and warping bass match with seventies jazz funk Rhodes solos. A superlative album of house music that’s dreamy but not vague, sumptuous but not indulgent, soulful without any soul singers and funky without any breakbeats.