You can build on Rhythm Section International. Not only house music heads know this, but also [Prequel](https://www.hhv-mag.com/en/glossaryentry/6618/prequel.) The Australian contributed the then dewy-eyed label’s third catalogue number on Peckham in 2014, and now returns to the far-flung homebase after a five-year absence to deal with all the important issues: Love and all the shit that comes with it when it comes to an end. Almost every track on »Love (I Heard You Like Heartbreak)« also carries the titular word in its name, but the contexts change and so does the music. After a hazy sample intro, »When Love Is New« kicks off with a cautious deep house groove and polished vocals, before bittersweet soul strings cover the sky at the end and herald tragedy. But before that happens, samples of Brazilian music are filtered beyond recognition, wild sax solos are unleashed over a hip-hop-inflected beat and bass-driven funk is intertwined with meandering jazz piano. Towards the end, a stretched vocal-sample lament on »Unaware of Love« thus creeps up to the thrusting house-meets-dub torch song »And That’s the Story of Their Love (Short Version)« – a good nine minutes long, by the way – and Cazeaux O. S.L.O.’s sonorous overvoice reflections on the nature of love itself add a few darker shades to the sound, before a dragging soul sample brings a gesture of hopelessness lost in love to an end. Prequel may be a producer, but he is first and foremost a DJ and arranges his (self-)statements about love and loss mainly from other people’s material – also a way of at least approaching statements with general validity on such a personal topic.
David Vunk
Scheurneus EP
Moustache