The 10 Best Deep House Albums

The ten

1. Number 1 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums01

   Fingers Inc. — Another Side1988

   № 57 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

   The record where house stopped being tracks and became songs. Heard's programming breathes because he came to it as a drummer, and Owens remains the voice every deep house vocalist is measured against.

   Why it is number one

   Larry Heard was a drummer before he was a producer, which is why nothing on this record ticks. Another Side arrived in 1988 with Robert Owens singing over it and works less like a house record than like a soul album made by two men and a machine. Owens sings as though he wandered out of a church and could not decide whether to go back in. Heard gives him seventh chords, space, and a rhythm section that breathes rather than marks time. Everything tender the genre has managed since is a response to this, and most of it is a worse one.

2. Number 2 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums02

   DJ Sprinkles — Midtown 120 Blues2009

   № 54 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

   Terre Thaemlitz opens by explaining what house was for and who paid for it, then spends an hour proving it over the deepest tracks anyone made that decade. An argument and a beautiful record at once, which almost never happens, and it refuses every comfortable assumption the genre had settled into.

3. Number 3 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums03

   Larry Heard — Sceneries Not Songs, Volume One1994

   № 120 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

   Heard alone, in his ambient jazz register. Almost no vocals, no urgency, and one of the very few house records that improves when you stop paying attention to it.

4. Number 4 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums04

   Moodymann — Silentintroduction1997

   № 53 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

   Prince, gospel, dust and crowd noise, deliberately left out of focus. Kenny Dixon Jr. treats mystique as a production value, and the carelessness is entirely constructed.

5. Number 5 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums05

   Theo Parrish — Parallel Dimensions2000

   № 57 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

   Swing pushed to the edge of collapse and dust used as a compositional value. Parrish handles time the way a jazz drummer does, which is why producers take these records apart rather than simply enjoying them.

6. Number 6 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums06

   Herbert — Around the House1998

   № 114 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

   Microhouse with a beating heart and a manifesto behind it. Kitchen sounds and domestic noise under Dani Siciliano's voice, and far warmer than a concept record has any right to be.

7. Number 7 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums07

   Move D — Kunststoff1995

   № 82 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

   Heidelberg warmth, passed between producers like a secret and rediscovered by a new audience every few years. The most quietly beloved record in this field.

8. Number 8 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums08

   Isolee — We Are Monster2005

   № 160 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

   Rajko Müller writes melodies that never quite resolve and rhythms that never quite settle, and the record stays warm throughout in a way microhouse almost never managed. Half of minimal's melodic wing has been studying it since it landed, mostly without getting near it.

9. Number 9 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums09

   Blaze — 25 Years Later1990

   № 187 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

   New Jersey gospel house written as a song cycle rather than a set of tools, closer to Motown than to Chicago. Hedge, Milan and Herbert wrote and sang their own material when almost nobody in house was doing either.

10. Number 10 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums10

    Omar-S — Just Ask the Lonely2005

    № 127 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

    No distribution deal, no press, no interest in your opinion. Stubborn, unpolished Detroit house that sounds like an afternoon's work and has outlasted records that took years.

Eleven to twenty

Ranked, and held to the same rules as the ten.

1. Number 11 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums11

   Huerco S. — Colonial Patterns2013

   Cracked, tape-worn house from Kansas City, and the record that made lo-fi an aesthetic position rather than a limitation.

2. Number 12 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums12

   Efdemin — Efdemin2007

   № 69 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

   Hamburg reserve over Detroit longing. Minimal house with an inner life at a moment when most of it had none.

3. Number 13 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums13

   DJ Koze — Amygdala2013

   № 22 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

   Funny and devastating inside the same bar, which nobody else manages. Sits between this list and the parent.

4. Number 14 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums14

   Shinichi Atobe — Heat2018

   The Chain Reaction ghost making dub-house miniatures that sound tossed off and turn out unimprovable.

5. Number 15 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums15

   Octo Octa — Resonant Body2019

   № 197 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

   Euphoria treated as self-acceptance rather than escape, and the most open-hearted record in the modern field.

6. Number 16 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums16

   Kassem Mosse — Workshop 192014

   № 181 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

   Hardware house that wobbles like it might fall over and never does. Timing a computer cannot fake.

7. Number 17 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums17

   Charles Webster — Born On The 24th Of July2001

   № 81 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

   Headphone house rather than club house. Intimate, unshowy, and deeper than its surface manners suggest.

8. Number 18 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums18

   Maxmillion Dunbar — House of Woo2013

   № 179 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

   Washington DC's Future Times crew at their most sun-warped, and the defining American outsider-house record.

9. Number 19 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums19

   Move D & Benjamin Brunn — Songs from the Beehive2008

   № 205 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

   Two synthesists improvising at the border of house and ambient, never once losing the thread.

10. Number 20 on The 10 Best Deep House Albums20

    DJ Python — Mas Amable2020

    № 43 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

    Reggaeton slowed until it turns into ambient music, and one of the very few genuinely new dance ideas of its decade. Piñeyro calls it deep reggaeton, which is the more accurate label and the reason it sits here rather than in the ten.