COLL: Deep Love 3 Label: Dirt Crew

This is an excellent and sophisticated collection of straight-up deep house from the Dirt Crew label in Berlin. There are influences from dub, breaks, electro, R&B, and disco throughout this compilation, all put together by some of the biggest names in European house music. Wonderful stuff throughout, all very danceable and groovy. I generally liked the very smooth and warm house tracks. The strongest ones for me were #1 (Urulu's "Let Me Off Easy", #3 (Ben Le Desh's "Moody Goody"), #10 (Timmy P's "Tinnies for Breakfast"), and #16 (Evan Iff's "Rush"). Other winners include #5, #7, #12, #15.

CD 1: Try 1,3,5,7
1. Smooth and funky deep house w/ vocal loops, neat bouncy bass echoes. Hot!
2. Loopy deep house w/ reverberating tones and vocal sample
3. Wonderful disco-y flavors, cheery little synth tones and funky groove
4. Dubbed-out track that starts mellow and gets a bit tweaky halfway through
5. Dub-disco, w/ soulful male R&B vox. Not too thumpy, a bit more thoughtful.
6. Thumpy house, w/ big grinding effects and buildups. Lots of drama.
7. Chilled-out house, mellow synths and a neat pitched-up melodic funk groove
8. Starts mellow, gets bigger w/ vox samples and cut-up synth effects

CD 2: Try 10,12,15,16
9. Groovy house w/ cheerful little effects and simple catchy loops
10. Richly layered smooth synths, so sweet & warm - my favorite track so far
11. Reverberating synths and a classic house beat, nice claps
12. Cool, a breaks track! Funky change-of-pace w/ booty-shaking vibe
13. Crunching hard dirty beats on this stripped-down house banger
14. Straightforward deep-house w/ simple catchy loops and vox sample
15. Dub-calypso melodies and thumpin' house beats. Good solid stuff.
16. Wonderful warm and sensuous deep house. Nice bits of piano & synths.