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Helium‘s 1993 EP, The Works, is held in high regard as a masterpiece of house and trance music. Now, the EP has been remastered and repressed via the Kalahari Oyster Cult imprint for a February 25th release.
For those who have never had the pleasure of experiencing The Works, the EP opens with a pensive house groove titled “Try Me” which remains as iconic and danceable today as it was in ’93. “Out There” takes a deeper approach, capitalizing on a vocal sample that drives the atmospheric energy forward. Side A of The Works is undoubtedly the more dance floor-oriented portion of the EP, as things shift toward a lounge-centric, ambient sound on the flip.
Side B opens with the dreamy “Clouds,” with airy pads setting the stage for the next two tracks. If released in the present day, “We Are The Future” would seem to be a great take on the ever-popular retrowave sound, but the track was ripe for 1993 with cinematic drum work and arpeggios indicative of the era in which it was actually created. To round the EP out, the acid-tinged “What Is The Human Machine?” continues the lounge theme to emphatically punctuate The Works and cement the EP’s status as a timeless and influential classic.
The re-release of Helium’s The Works EP is out now on Kalahari Oyster Cult and available exclusively through deejay.de.
