Super tight deep house, verging on what I imagine “lounge music” to be. I’d always thought of 2006 as a relatively fallow period for this sort of thing - the sort of drive time house that is neither un-grown nor un-sexy but escapes the stigma of “grown and sexy” - although that may just be the effect of the ongoing re-education campaign centering “blog house” as the era’s musical lodestone.

Sorry for the wait. It wasn’t completely unintentional, but I had some time off amidst a job switch and didn’t get to the keyboard much. Rest assured that my output will come back up to par now that I’m once again selling eight computer-hours a day to my faceless benefactor.

I don’t know anything about DJ Finesse, Lucky Smurf, or the short-lived Murderland Records outfit, but these are the two fastest Baltimore club tracks I’ve ever heard. Abandoning “Think (About It)” and “Sing Sing” to push into the mid-140s BPM, the A side lifts drums and an exhortation from “Long Red,” while the flip pairs two Michael Jackson samples and some kind of DJ Paul-esque evil laugh to utterly deranged effect.

The one-and-only Dance Mania solo 12” from DJ Tone, better recognized as Santonio (as in “Reese and ”). “Breathe Again” presents a way harder, snare roll-ier take on the same R. Kelly flip made famous as Dee Jay Nehpets “Na Na Na” the following year.

An all-time entry in the crowded “Moments in Love sample canon, turned unduly difficult to find after showing up in a couple Ben UFO sets. Made by DJ Technics under a one-time “Technosis alias for reasons unknown to me. The A1 is the big draw for most people, but I get plenty of mileage out of both “Bonus Beat #1 and the never-ending “Monkey Dance loop.

Late-period Dance Mania, where some of the tropes that would be central to early 2000s ghettotech start to surface before the label's demise shifts the locus of the sound up I-94 to Detroit. “T-Shirt gashes Adina Howard “T Shirt & Panties, and “How We Look breaks out the classic male/female call and response vocal.