The best house music is seductive, using only a few, small elements to create a groove that is impossible not to dance to. It’s hardly surprising that we often hear house described as ‘sexy’. The wonderful thing about instrumental music is that it doesn’t need anything other than a groove to feel this way, but as anyone who’s tried to replicate nicely swung drums on Ableton knows, creating grooves is as much about alchemy as science.
How to easily make a track ‘sexy’, then? One way is to stick an (always female) orgasm sample over the top, immediately importing all of the hyper-masculine atmosphere from mainstream clubbing into what is meant to be an alternative space. Here are five tracks that end up doing just that. Most are good tracks in their own right, but in all cases the sample stops them from reaching their full potential.
UBQ Project – ‘When I Fell N Love’
Not too bad, this one. A really tasteless vocal sample luckily being quickly pushed to the side by a genuinely deep, grooving house tune.
Sunny Place – ‘Won(X-Mix)’
The bass line and progression on this are sexy enough to speak for themselves, so why include moaning samples throughout?
Black Girl Named Sally – ‘Say You Love Me’ (listen on Soundcloud)
I remember being very excited on hearing the samples for this repress, everything was right: a good label, endorsement from the excellent producer QX-1, and the first ten seconds seemed like quintessential 90s deep house. Then the orgasm noises began and it was quickly forgotten.
Bodywork – ‘Deeper and Deeper’
Would be an excellent tune. The innuendo title and sexiness of the groove together create a really sexy ambiguity. Then the orgasm begins and removes all the subtlety and restraint. Bonus points for it happening throughout the tune, making it impossible to avoid even with prudent mixing.
Lil Louis – ‘French Kiss ‘
The quintessential orgasm-noise tune. This is unsexy for the same reason that extremely hardcore pornography is unsexy. It’s totally gratuitous.
