Berlin-based producer and remixer Henrik Schwarz’s latest offering on !K7 Records, ‘Live’, is a blend of jazz influenced deep house and soulful tech. Spanning sixteen tracks, ‘Live’ features both original and remix work from Schwarz, all mixed into a continuous set. The music was recorded live in Tokyo, Manchester, Berlin, Porto, Nagoya, London, Nijmegen, Madrid, Glasgow, Instanbul, Rome, Chicago, Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Montreal and Amsterdam.

After opening with the spiritual jazz of one of Schwarz’s heroes, Sun Ra and his 1957 piece ‘Lullaby For Realville’, Schwarz starts looping and laying down some solid beats as the track reaches its finale. My favourite track is not long into the piece, with his hypnotic remix of Norwegian folk siren Mari Boine’s ‘Vuoi Vuoi’. For those unfamiliar with her work you should definitely check her out, Boine’s haunting voice plays lightly over stripped down up tempo beats. Keeping in a deeper vein is a collaboration with Jesse Rose, ‘Stop, Look & Listen’. Ambient sounds blanket light percussion in this track and it shows that you don’t need a heavy bass and drum line to produce a driving number. Another collaboration, this time with Âme and Dixon, produces some stunning tech house, featuring the vocal talents of Derrick Carter no less!

Schwarz takes a different line with his remix of Kraak & Smaak’s ‘No Sun In The Sky’, this deep house number getting a very crunchy synth line. Things stay in a funky vibe for the scat-jazz musings of ‘Leave My Head Alone Brain’, the car chase bassline complementing the drum track perfectly. We are bumped up a notch with the edgy tech houser ‘Jimis’, a nice acidesque melody ever present throughout. One artist I didn’t expect to see on here was James Brown, Schwarz lending a deft hand to ‘It’s A Man’s World’. A fairly simple melody and heavy synths leave room for snippets of the Godfather of Soul. We close out with the very playful ‘Jazz Book #2 (Music For Little Hands)’, and I’m sure I’m not the first to note the similarities to the ubiquitous ‘Chopsticks’.

Schawrz’s history in acid jazz shows in all of his productions, whether it is the harder tech tracks or the ambient house numbers. This album is clever without being pretentious, funky without being cheesy, and driving without being over the top. A very solid album that will appeal to those in the know. In a word: intelligent.