House

When house tracks first landed on the turntables of taste-making DJs in the early '80s, the sound of wailing divas and twisted funk/soul samples didn't just sound familiar — it sounded like disco coming back from the dead with a vengeance, a straight-from-the-underground attitude that had as much to do with the burgeoning hip-hop scene as it did with dance music. Take Todd Terry, for instance: the Brooklyn native became a house legend by dropping stuttering samples (adrenaline-shot snippets like "I wanna go bang!" and "Can't you feel it?") in the same room as the ghosts of Studio 54's past.

In the process, he helped set the stage for progressive house, along the lines of Danny Tenaglia (see the sprawling, soul-kissed single "Music is the Answer") and many of our Next Steps.

Now that house is the unofficial soundtrack of superclubs, like Pacha and Ministry of Sound, it's easy to forget the genre's down-and-dirty beginnings in the underground. That is, at least until you cue up the following cuts, a jittery lot of certified jams that brings a '90s revivalist like Derrick Carter (the demented but delightful "Where U At?") under the same banner as modern-day trailblazers like Luomo (the lustful vocals and avant-pop leanings of "The Present Lover"), Metro Area (the Grade-A funk/boogie beats of "Miura"), and Junior Senior (the ridiculous but ravishing "Move Your Feet").

Much like techno, house comes in many distinct flavors. A few minutes with our Deep Cuts tasting menu is all it takes to hear what we mean.

No humans were harmed in the making of "Leave Me Now," but Matthew Herbert did manage to sample hair, skin, and organs (the internal kind) in his pursuit of synchronized clicks and cuts. He's not the only innovator in our House Essentials, either, whether we're talking about the carnivalesque cuts of Basement Jaxx, the steam-pressed San Francisco treats of Mark Farina, the hiccupping, jazz/funk-infused house of Theo Parrish, the filtered "French touch" of Bob Sinclair, or the throwback loft-party tracks of Ursula 1000.

The late-'90s revival of house music wasn't a surprise so much as inevitable, what with artists like Basement Jaxx and Herbert taking the genre's 4/4 pulse into uncharted, cross-breeding territories. Kind of like how house got its start in the first place — swiping cues from the smoldering embers of disco while applying speaker-thumpin' shades of synth-pop, Latin soul, dub reggae, funk, jazz, electro, and maybe even a diva or two. All of which led to its eventual influence on pop music as a whole, from the superstar singles of Madonna and Kylie Minogue to chart-topping crossover acts like C+C Music Factory and Technotronic ("Pump Up the Jam," anyone?). Our House Essentials covers the scene's entire history, from smash hits like "100% Pure Love," "Funkytown," and "Don't Call Me Baby" to underground heroes like Todd Terry, Jesse Saunders, and Mark Farina.