A fully deserved retrospective for Henrik Schwarz, this, put together by Defected as the twentieth release in their increasingly indisposable House Masters series. It sounds an obvious thing to say, but Schwarz has done a lot of very different beat making in his time, some of it without a bass drum – which the jazzy and still highly danceable ‘Kammermusik’ with Bugge Wesseltoft demonstrates. But the best stuff here has the bigger beats – and that includes quality remixes of Coldcut’s ‘Walk A Mile In My Shoes’ (now seven years old!) and a cracking version of ‘Where We At?’, his collaboration with Ame, Dixon and Derrick Carter. Yet mentions should also be made for the delicate melancholy of his remix of the Stateless track ‘Bloodstream’, the brilliantly turned funk of ‘I Exist Because Of You’, his collaboration with Amampondo, and the gritty soul he applies to the remix of Omar’s ‘I’m Feeling You’. What this collection shows above all is how well Schwarz works with other people, and how inventive he can be within the confines of a four to the floor beat.
5 out of 5
Reviewed By Ben Hogwood
