Whitney Houston’s voice, like Loleatta Holloway or Robin S, is going to become a house music standard over the course of the next few years or so. It’s inevitable. And nobody knows the standards and respects them more in D.C.’s underground scene than our own Phillip Hafner – otherwise known to mere mortals as Philco.
His latest remix, which recently debuted on London’s Lipstick Disco as an exclusive, is transfixed on Houston’s legacy as a soulful crooner by layering her vocals over classic four-on-the-floor rhythms and a rolling bassline with a dynamic spring like a young rabbit in an English garden. Overall, the piece feels like a contemporary classic that belongs in the same field as Masters at Work or Derrick Carter as it carries a tech groove to its most rhapsodic extreme; it’s a blend of tech and deep house that is expertly balanced and presented with a sweet, mellow touch not unlike the tenderness and vulnerability which made Whitney Houston’s voice so wonderful. This is a mood setter and head bopper from start to finish.
Listen to Philco’s remix of Whitney Houston’s “Fine” below.
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