here is often a suspicion of new musical genres, as if new sounds don’t deserve a new vocabulary. Perhaps the richest recent trend in electronic music is tech-house or microhouse, which—especially for what is considered a minimalist genre—has, in the past few years, been almost improbably varied and engaging. A label coined by The Wire—as these things often are—microhouse is a rare tag that works as both a description of sound and a music-making process. (Glitch, for instance, is a sound that became a process; in dub the process became synonymous with the sound).


Microhouse, which breaks house down its barest rythmic elements, may seem like a simple template but over the past few years a group of innovative, flexible producers have reconstructed them from the bottom up. Led by the German labels Force Tracks, Kompakt, and Perlon, they’ve reinvented and re-imagined the sounds of dance not unlike the way the Krautrock bands of the early 1970s did for a then-bloated rock. MRI—the Frankfurt, Germany-based production team of Frank Elting and Stephan Liec—jumped to the forefront of microhouse thanks to the hyperminamlist Rhythmogenesis and the inclusion of three of their tracks of Andrew Weatherall’s Hypercity mix.


Now the genres are branching out into other hybrids— Herbert’s jazz-inspired torch songs, Luomo (Vladislav Delay)’s dancefloor miniatures; Kaito’s neo-trance; and Closer Musik’s pop house—so too are MRI. In this case, they are blending disco, R&B, and dub. The clicks and bits are still there, but they are a foundation for more traditional four-on-the-floor sounds than the central feature of the music itself. The pleasures may more straightforward—and this is one of the most obvious of these tech-house blends—but therein also lies an element of surprise from a duo whose debut record helped forge this minimalist revolution.


Disco and house are musical cousins, but reductionism and a lack of excess aren’t exactly hallmarks of the mid-70s dance version of punk. Take away a few high-hats and bpms, adopt dry, flat vocals—or, more often, none at all—and you’ve got more of a new sound than a retro record.


Most of the rest of the record is filled with extremes: more abstract beats or near pop-tech house. With the exception of “Blue,” a reworking of the vocals of Aaliyah’s “Try Again,” over a bubbly, fizzling beat—it’s the pop songs that work the least. Like the work of Luomo’s similar but superior Vocalcity, MRI’s discoesque tracks, “Deep Down South” and “Tied to the ‘80s,” shine the brightest. They ‘re not only textural and sensual but have bass-thumping melodies to spare. MRI’s latest is at once endlessly melodic, effervescently textural and lusciously detailed, but is unfortunately dragged down a bit by a slavish attempt at diversity. This is another winning addition to the microhouse sound, but for the uninitiated any of Kompakt’s best compilations or Hypericty is the best introduction to this massively rich sound.