If you’ve set foot in a club of late chances are you would’ve been socialising to music made by one of the globe’s biggest tech house merchants: Dennis Cruz. His music is the right mixture of sexy deepness and straight-up dance floor heat (which can border on the cerebral at times). And Beatport users love him… his tracks has spent an accumulative 1849 days in the Beatport Top 100 charts.

Oh, and last year he was also Resident Advisor’s second most charted artist. Damn, that’s some serious chart action. Ahead of his Australian tour we thought now would be a good time to re-visit 5 Dennis Cruz tracks to prime you for his upcoming visit…

This little sex beast is signed to Suara, and you can hear why one of the scene’s bigger imprints asked for this Dennis Cruz bomb. A vocal telling us everybody should ‘work your body’ and that everybody ‘came to party’ might sound a bit pedestrian, but if it’s underpinned by the deepest, dopest Dennis Cruz beat it suddenly makes sense. And once the breakdown hits, the vocal gets more stern requesting ’Everybody get on the floor…’, almost as if the preceding beat didn’t do the job properly… pffft. But if her soothing voice doesn’t get the job done then the mother of all drops will definitely convince you to get to the floor. Oh Jesus, fan me down now please.

Sometimes all you want is just a beat that will make you throw down on the floor to get rid of all that negative monkey energy. The Spaniard really understands that dilemma and here he offers his version of that track. This is one of his more simple beats, yet it is effectively deadly. The kick is almost parental in it’s approach, almost like it is tricking you into eating your vegetables even though you don’t want too. It makes a damn good case. And the bassline is a massive block of sub frequencies which gently carries you all the way through to the conclusion. The vocal really wants you to ‘move your body’ and ‘get freaky’, but by the time the vocal appears it’s all in vain: you have long lost control over your body and things have gone way beyond freaky… at that stage it’s downright dirty.

If “Get Freaky” is one of his more simple beats then, “Feeling High’ would have to be Dennis Cruz stripped down to the bare essentials: Bass, kick, sample and percussion. And man does it feel good. If you hear this beat in the club forget about it, you will be converted. His beats are always wrapped in a warmth which you almost can bite into, and this could just be the tastiest one yet. There is no way you won’t be moving once this bad boy pops. The vocal, which sounds like it was recorded in a 1920’s speakeasy, woozily proclaims that she is “feeling high”, and no doubt that is because she heard this beat. It really is every drug ever made rolled into one exquisite aural beat.

Once again Dennis hits us with a simple and effective title. But don’t judge the Spanish One and keep in mind this isn’t an exercise in poetry, but an exercise in the poetry of the dance floor. The bad behaviour here seems to be another filthy Cruz production which is greasy and loose, and you probably need to go wash your ears out after hearing this sinful number. And according to the vocal ‘Marijuana is the flame, heroin is the fuse, LSD is the bomb’. But don’t buy into the sentiment, as Carlos Quiroz comments on youtube: “i have never met anyone who’s life has gone to completely shit with lsd, i can’t say the same about heroin”(sic). Mmm, pretty thought-provoking stuff. Either way, don’t do drugs… do beats.

And here it is, the track that consumed Beatport for a fair few weeks at number one and probably elevated the Spaniard to headliner status. The beats are heavy, sweaty and extremely seductive. It’s the sort of track which will make the person next to you your new best friend when you both acknowledge the special moment you are sharing in. And of course there is the vocal, the unmistakable sounds of Nina Simone singing about a ‘new dawn and a new day’. To be honest that vocal has been done to death, but in the hands of a capable lover like Dennis Cruz it takes on a whole new meaning, it takes on a new… life.

Tour Dates

Friday 21st July: Coast Port Beach, Perth

Saturday 22nd July: The Grand, Wollongong (Day)

Saturday 22nd July: Chinese Laundry, Sydney (Night)

Sunday 23rd July: Revolver, Melbourne (Day)

 

Words by Sterling Copper.