A guide to Masters at Work - aka the most influential duo in dance music: Part three
Two weeks ago I have you part one of my guide to the most influential duo in dance music. Last week: part two. This week, it’s part three (of three), in which I conclude with the Clyde Stubblefield of the drum machine, may favourite remix of a MAW track and their excursions into Afrobeat
I hope you’ve enjoyed this 7,000 word guide to MAW. Let me know below.
For me, it’s a good example of what you can do with a newsletter that you probably wouldn’t find space for with most media. Indulgent, yes, but hopefully worth it. Anyway, next week it’s on to fresh fields.
AKA the Clyde Stubblefield of the drum machine
If The Nervous Track is MAW’s best drum song then The Bounce by Kenlou - the alias the duo used for their trackier work - is their best drum machine song, a small but vitally important difference.
Speaking to Skiddle, Kenny explained that Kenlou records are “not produced the way we would do a Masters At Work record. It's nowhere near as polished as that or with arrangements that are bigger and bass changes.”
The Bounce, released in 1995 on a 12 inch with the almost equally brilliant Gimme Groove, is, in many ways, about as far as you can get from the song-based house structure of I Can’t Get No Sleep. There’s no vocal and minimal melody - but instead the song is pure track, a monstrous robotic groove of machine funk that sounds like prime Detroit techno, Sheffield Bleep or even Kraftwerk, in its clean, metallic edges.
Vega told Defected that The Bounce was the product of a studio jam while MAW were working on an Incognito remix and you can kind of see it. The Bounce sounds eminently free, a track that is in tune with its own particular logic and little else, the work of two brilliant producers letting their hair down and the vibes flow. The Bounce is eminently loose, in this way. At the same time, the groove is under total control, in a way that reminds me of those Clyde Stubblefield drum lines that flow like the ocean tide without ever missing the beat.
Every tone on The Bounce is perfect, every click refined, every tweak done to perfection. Which is why the track is one of the best dance floor fillers ever and will remains in DJs’ record bags until the earth is sucked into the sun. (See also the teeth-stripping minimal funk of the MAW Dub mix of Tony Touch’s I Wonder Why (He's The Greatest DJ)
When I interviewed Louie for the Line Noise podcast I asked him about the line between Masters at Work and Kenlou music and how they decide what becomes what. "Well, first of all, we make the track first and then we decide what it becomes,” he said. “You know, we don’t go in thinking, ‘We're going to do a Kenlou track.’ No, we just go in and feel it.
“Kenny and I have a really special relationship. There’s a definite synergy between us when we're in the studio. I get behind a keyboard, he's on a drum machine, and we just go. Whatever gets created that night - it could be three or four tracks - then we decide what goes where, or we keep working on it, and then we decide what we want to do with it.”
Nuyorican Soul Featuring Jocelyn Brown - It's Alright, I Feel It! (Roni Size Remix)
AKA jungle repays its debt
In 1996 Kenny and Louie released the second Nuyorican Soul single, Mind Fluid, a kind of even Nervouser Track, with its classically-minded synth lines. By this time, work was afoot on the debut - and, indeed, only - Nuyorican soul album.
Nuyorican Soul, the eponymous album, took 20 months to record. But it was worth every second. Singers on the LP include disco / house star Jocelyn Brown, Roy Ayers, India and renowned jazz guitarist George Benson, while Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri also appear. Vincent Montana, Jr., known for his work with MFSB and the Salsoul Orchestra, contributed string arrangements and Jazzy Jeff added scratches.
Nuyorican Soul’s version of the Salsoul Orchestra’s Runaway, for example, had four backing singers, baritone saxophone, bass, bass trombone, two cello players, live drums, flute, French horn, guitar, percussion, two trombones, two trumpets, two violas, 12 violins and a lead vocal by India. 20 months seems short for such extravagance.
Nuyorican Soul was the explosion of cosmopolitain music minds, a product of New York’s blazing musical fusion. “We were brought up in a place where we were exposed to hip hop, Latin music, disco, R&B, classics and jazz,” Vega told Orriginal. “So our slogan was that we were into all kinds of music. We’ve always taken chances and tried different things and I think that’s what kept us going and has stopped us getting bored. Nuyorican Soul came from that feeling.”
It’s a stunning album, one of the best of the 90s. And yet what made the Nuyorican Soul project so singularly incredible was the combination of original album plus the remixes that surrounded it.
Nuyorican Soul is a dance album; but its luxurious disco / Latin vibes weren’t really a reflection of what people were listening to in 1997, when it came out. And that’s fine. Nuyorican Soul, the album, could exist in its own world.
But Kenny and Louie (and Gilles Peterson, whose Talking Loud label put out Nuyorican Soul) were smart enough - and connected enough - to commission the very best remixers, to take Nuyorican Soul to the heart of every dance floor in 1997.
Over a series of single releases we were treated to the Armand van Helden Mongoloids In Space remix of Runaway; 4 Hero’s utterly classic remix of I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun; MAW featuring Q- Tip’s take on the same song; and the Mood II Swing remix of It's Alright, I Feel It! Classics all, which helped Nuyorican Soul to own 1997. I genuinely don’t think I have ever experienced a greater set of remixes around one album.
Among all this, the one remix I want to highlight is Roni Size’s take on It's Alright, I Feel It! There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the song is a Masters at Work, Jocelyn Brown and Bennie Diggs original on an album that perhaps relies a little too heavily on covers.
Secondly, Roni Size was one of the many junglists inspired by Nuyorican Soul’s The Nervous Track and it only seems right that he re-paid the favour. And thirdly, Size’s take on It's Alright, I Feel It! - which, frustratingly, is not available on streaming - is one of the best remixes ever, with the Bristol producer riding the song’s rolling piano line and Jocelyn Brown’s ecstatic vocal to 13 minutes of jazzy jungle heaven, in a way that is faithful-ish to the original, without ever being too reverent.
Masters at Work - To Be In Love
AKA the warm, beating heart of house
If I simply had to name my favourite MAW tune it would be To Be In Love, the 1997 single that became a global house anthem. It’s not as innovative as The Ha Dance, as influential as The Nervous Track, as epic as Love & Happiness or as thrillingly funky as The Bounce. But To Be In Love is just about perfect anyway, a helpless puddle of warm, bubbling love that is a classic song, as much as a classic tune.
It starts with a skipping beat, like a heart going wild on the wire, then in comes the bass line - one of my favourite in all house music - wandering, funky and very melodic, a hook in itself; then there’s a beautiful organ, subtly pushing the song along; and eventually India comes in with a devastating vocal, perfectly sung.
… And so the song kind of continues for 12 glorious minutes, taking its own sweet time, breaking down, building up, giving individual instruments their time to shine and with an absolutely massive vocal vamp from India. It’s a record that can afford to take its time because it knowns the fundamental are so strong - that melody, principally - that we will wait for it as long as the song wants, which may sound frustrating but really isn’t.
When I interviewed Louie for the Line Noise podcast in 2019 he explained the origin of the song, which started out as a track on India’s 1996 album with Tito Puente and The Count Basie Orchestra, Jazzin, penned by the legendary Vincent Montana, Jr. - AKA “the Godfather of disco” - with lyrics by trumpeter, arranger and songwriter Joe Lattanzi.
“When I got the stems of the vocal, I went into the studio and the magic just happened right away,” Vega explained. “I went in with Kenny [Dope] and he started the beat. Then Gene Perez came in - that was the magic moment when that bass line came in. I have to give credit to my brother Gene Perez, who played the bass line, and to my other brother, Albert Menendez …I had him on the Wurlitzer and that’s where the melodic part came from, the one in the intro of the song.”
Lisa Fischer and Paulette McWilliams were summoned to record backing vocals and Vega said that the song came together quickly. “It didn’t take long because the magic just happened once that groove was in,” he explained. “We finished the song and called India back in to sing the vamp, which is when she’s ad-libbing and doing all that.
“We stretched it into a more underground house groove kind of vibe. When we finished, the song was long - over 10 minutes, maybe 12 minutes…Everybody was on that record. It was wonderful. It was definitely a Nuyorican Soul-meets-house kind of feel. When we finished the song and released it, we had no idea what it would do. We were just like, ‘Oh, it's a nice house song.’”
That it most definitely was. But also so much more. To Be In Love is a house anthem, a pop gem and a song that believes in the magic of love; it’s house music with a skip in its step and butterflies in its stomach, one of the most uplifting, gorgeous, joyful pieces of music you can imagine. Listening to the song I find it barely credible that Vega and India got divorced the year before it was released, in 1996. But I guess that’s the magic of music.
“The song stayed with people for years and through generations,” Vega told me. “I had people coming up to me saying, 'Oh, this song was played at my wedding.' Or 'This song was played when I got engaged.' It was like the ultimate dance love song….And still to this day, people want to hear it.”
MAW - MAW Expensive (feat. Wunmi) (MAW Afrobeat mix)
AKA MAW go global
Kenny and Louie both come from Puerto Rican families that are steeped in music. Louie’s father, Luis F. Vega Sr., was a jazz saxophonist and his uncle, Hector Lavoe, was a renowned salsa singer. Kenny’s father, Hector Torres, also sings salsa. So it was perhaps inevitable that the duo would bring Latin influences to their work.
But MAW were also hugely influential in bringing African music into house, at least in the mainstream. (Because, let’s not forget, producers in Africa have been making house music right from the start.)
In a 2012 interview with RBMA Louie revealed that the duo had tried to get Fela Kuti to appear on the Nuyorican Soul song You Can Do It but the collaboration never happened, with the Afrobeat legend dying in August 1997, soon after the record was released. (Jazz fusion guitarist George Benson finally featured on the song, which, as you can imagine, had changed radically by this time.)
The first obvious MAW track to bear the influence of Afrobeat - I say “obvious” because the group sampled Lafayette Afro Rock Band on Justa Lil Dope and you can hear the influence of Fela et al in the drums on, say, The Nervous Track - was MAW Expensive, a 12-minute cover of / tribute to Fela Kuti that was released on the 1999 EP A Tribute to Fela.
MAW Expensive sums up much of what makes Masters at Work such an incredible musical force. Like Love & Happiness, the track is an epic achievement that expands the outer limits of house; like The Nervous Track, it is a tower of percussive force; like To Be In Love, it is beautifully warm and welcoming; and like Beautiful People it is an incredible collective effort, home to four backing vocalists, two live percussionists, saxophone, trumpet and trombone, topped off with a fabulously expressive performance from Wunmi, who does an amazing job of stepping into Fela’s shoes.
What is perhaps most impressive about the song is that it perfectly joins the dots between Masters at Work and Afrobeat. For MAW, the song sounds like an entirely natural extension of their sound, with its rattling drums, drawn out funk and elusively baggy-loosefulness; you could easily imagine it slotting onto the Nuyorican Soul album among the house, disco, jazz, hip hop and salsa.
But MAW Expensive also sounds like a faithful tribute to Fela’s Afrobeat, where chicken-scratch guitar and pinpoint bass tie down oceanic waves of percussion, and other instruments are given reign to roam, their solos dancing over the mix like cherry blossom being buffered in a storm. And all this before Wunmi comes in half-way through and tie-dyes her personality all over MAW Expensive.
I spent a good few minutes this week wondering how MAW Expensive sounds modern (both for a song released in 1999 and for today) while still being true to Fela’s sound. I think the answer lies largely in the production, which sounds notably shinier than a Fela track - not in a bad way - and the sonics, which are generally more extreme and (perhaps) more compressed. MAW Expensive sounds like an Afrobeat record that had heard house music and liked it, rather than necessarily a work of house music itself. And it kicks, the flute flying around like a knife act at a disco.
The following year, MAW, Wunmi and much of the same studio crew returned for another Fela cover, Ékabo, although this time the 12 inch also included an Afro House mix, which took the nu-Afrobeat stylings of the original song and edged it subtly towards house, with a swung, four four beat replacing the scrambling drum line and the production tightened up a shade. It’s an absolute classic that helped to welcome in a new Millennium where Africa would become one of the overt driving forces in house music.
Talking of the new Millennium, I don’t want to give the impression that MAW stopped making incredible music around the year 2000. It’s true that my selections here have concentrated on the 90s, which is when MAW were absolutely flying. But they did produce some fantastic new music in the first years of the new Millennium, including Work, Our Time is Coming with Roy Ayers, Backfired with India and The Time is Now, with Wunmi, before going relatively quiet when their solo careers started to take precedent.
In 2021, after years away, MAW returned with Mattel, the first new single in two decades, which sounded enough like classic MAW to keep me very happy; and have released a steady stream of new music and recently uncovered dubs ever since.
From this period I especially love In Time by V, aka R&B singer songwriter Valvin Roane, which features James Poyse on keyboards and Questlove on drums in a jaw-dropping collection of talent. You could call it rolling back the years, maybe, for a duo who made their recorded debut three decades previously. But that makes it sound like Masters at Work fell off, like their work somehow wasn’t absolutely essential for the progress of dance music, even as they edged away from the MAW name at the start of the 2000s.
Nothing could be further from the truth: house, jungle, broken beat and UK Garage owe a distinct debt to Masters at Work and it is ironic that the duo retreated from the limelight in the early 2000s, when the UKG sound they had influenced was raging up the British charts.
In summer 2025 Work was all over the London clubs; and who would bet against something similar happening in 2026, 2027 and ever summer onward? Masters at Work are essential and eternal; ever-changing, ever-influential and bursting with life, a family of house, love and inspiration.
Some listening
I’ve never been to the Mekong River, sadly. But I can assure you that when I do, the first song on my headphones will be Mekong Ballad, by Guangzhou’s COLA REN. REN makes her singing debut on the song and her sumptuous voice sits beautifully aloft on a series of riverine blips and burbles, a subtle clapping rhythm and celestial saxophone from Chinese free jazz artist tga. The song is pretty much perfect as it is, although readers will hopefully understand if I say that I could really imagine it floating out from the underside of an early Orb track seven minutes in, accompanied by a weird spoken-word vocal about gardening.
Sudan Archives’ new album THE BPM examines her mother’s roots in Michigan and her father’s in Illinois. And what could be more Michigan and Illinois than Detroit techno and Chicago house? Which goes some way to explain why A Bug’s Life is an absolute piano house stormer, complete with stirring violin line and beautifully interweaved backing vocals, making the kind of song you’d definitely want to hear at a huge rave as the sun comes up. (Although the sad reality is you’re more likely to hear hard techno. Sigh.)
Alejandra Cárdenas - Motherland
It may be only October but thoughts are already turning to the end of year lists, which has served to remind me that Alejandra Cárdenas’ (AKA Ale Hop’s) album with Titi Bakorta, Mapambazuko, is an absolute gem, one of the most joyously unhinged records of the year.
In one sense Motherland, the first single from A Body Like A Home, Cárdenas’ first album under her birth name, couldn’t be further from Mapambazuko: it’s heavy, where Mapambazuko was light, sad and thoughtful, tracing the cyclical legacies of colonialism via Cárdenas’ spoken word and angry electric guitar. And yet you can still, perhaps, see a line connecting the two records. Both are adventurous and very moving, the sadness here hitting as deep as the joy inherent to Mapambazuko.
Anna von Hausswolff - Struggle With The Beast
Was Anna von Hausswolff always this amazing? Struggle With The Beast is an eight-minute voodoo funk revelation that prowls around the sound field like Led Zeppelin meeting Dr. John with 100 dirty dollars in the pocket and a fading velvet shirt. Seriously, the song has hypnotic brass, a drum line that hits like rolling thunder and a vocal that’s like a howl at the moon, everything you could want in music.
Low End Activist - Airdrop 07 (Brillo’s Teeth)
“UK rave reanimator” - his words, not mine, but definitely good words - Low End Activist is set to drop parts two and three of his Airdrop series on Peak Oil in November. Part three goes in hard on 1999-2001, when grime was emerging from UK Garage, while part two (my favourite) revisits the tech step sound of late 90s drum & bass, albeit the more twisted, experimental side of the genre, rather than the darker-and-angrier-at-all-costs strand.
Part two’s Airdrop 07 (Brillo’s Teeth), for example, is a kind of half-stepping skank that feels a little like dubstep avant la lettre, a breakbeat tumbled around the mix like a caged lion, terrifying but with the illusion of control. Add in a bass line that mixes eight parts dread to two parts acid and you have yourself a pulsating tension headache of a tune.
Oneohtrix Point Never - Lifeworld
There’s a kind of nervous ecstasy to Lifeworld, one of three songs released from Onohtrix Point Never’s new album Tranquilizer, an anxious mechanical scrabbling that interrupts the heavenly synth lines like a wind-up rat pawing at his cage.
The song has an incredibly dense sound, too, sounds poking up at odd angles to surprise and delight, but it’s a light heaviness, like the proverbial tonne of feathers. I’ve listened again and again but Lifeworld keeps surprising me.
Things I’ve done
In which Johann Wald and I rank all of The Cure’s studio albums in order of greatness, from godlike to “The Cure don’t make bad albums”. On video! Have a look. Have an argument. Call us fools.
RPS Presents - Lawrence (our own Street Level Superstar)
Johann Wald and I fulfilled a dream by speaking to Lawrence, of Felt, Denim and, now, Mozart Estate, when he was in Barcelona for an event celebrating Street Level Superstar, Will Hodgkinson’s genius book about the enigmatic star. They spoke about everything from Bowie to Cilla Black, fame to failure, as well as Mozart Estate’s new album Tower Block In A Jam Jar, in a wide-ranging 40-minute interview that leaves no doubt about Lawrence’s absolute star quality.
One-minute review - Bar Italia
AKA how I learned to stop worrying about Bar Italia and start loving them. Featuring my face, Bar Italia’s Some Like It hot, a Stereolab T shirt and a mug. Good on, have a look, it will only take you two minutes.
Line Noise podcast - With Emma-Jean Thackray
Emma-Jean Thackray's second album Weirdo is a modern classic and if you don't like it, you're wrong. I spoke to Emma-Jean before her recent Barcelona gig about pitch-dark humour, Jazz Club, reclaiming the word "weirdo" and the saving power of music. It’s quite an emotional one.
The Playlists
Available via Apple Music: The newest and the bestest and The newest and bestest 2025.
And Spotify (for the moment): The newest and bestest 2025 and The newest and the bestest.
Paid subscribers get bonus podcasts, you know.