Available on: Eye 4 Eye digital

So it’s about that time, as we hang tantalisingly on the threshold of summer, that thoughts turn to the records that are going to soundtrack the balmy days and nights to come. And then comes along Altered Natives’ new album, and I just cannot wait for summer to properly start. If we get a proper, so hot and hazy it’s like there’s a weird hum in the air kind of summer (or even if we don’t), it’s going to a be a lot of fun having this album around.

This is an unremittingly intense, steamy, propulsive house album. Danny Native gets round the old clichéd conundrum of how to translate dance music to a long-player by just going at it like a peak time club set, complete with seamless cuts from track to track. It’s a record which distils one of the truly great things that UK Funky has given us; a ruffing up of house, where polish and pose give way to car-shaking wild energy.

Native’s method is, on the surface, pretty straightforward. He fires out loops of bucking, twisting beats – UK Funky with a bit of techno chrome plating. He then adds the most vibey elements of London’s post-rave history; darkside hardcore synths, the taut flinches and feints of UKG basslines, some grimey sub-bass scraped up off the floor at FWD. And then the dancefloor monster is complete, destroying everything in its path, and so it’s on to the next track. Melody? Emotion? Songs? No, No, and thankfully no. But I don’t mean to suggest that there’s anything rudimentary about these productions. When it comes to making you want to move, Danny Native is as skilled as it gets. For instance, ‘Body Gal’, a carnival of drums tearing paths through a smog cloud of dubby pads, is simply incredibly funky.

Just when you think you’ve got acclimatised, Native pushes the intensity up still further. Check out, for example, ‘God Made Me’. The first minute or so; Mentasm synths, fog-horn bass and a junglist sample of “Fire!”. A feast of panic-sounds perfectly suited to, as they used to say, bring on the rush. And then, a minute and a half in, a second beat with much sharper teeth is announced with a repeated “Woop! Woop!” sample. A bafflingly underused device in dance music, the “woop!”.  You’d think that would be enough, but no, another minute later and he pitches the track further into furious joy with an absurdly massive bassline that seems to groan under its own weight. I am not, sadly, D Double E, but if I was I’d be going all “dirty-y-y-y-y” right now.

Exhausting stuff. Certainly, there are occasions when Tenement Yard seems almost too much; too pungent, almost, for everyday consumption. It’s a long (80 minutes) album, and the loop-based trackiness of its take on UK Funky may not be to all tastes. But, God, there are many moments here that are utterly thrilling. As tough, as uncompromising, and – most importantly – as fun a House set as you could wish to hear, this summer or any summer.

Simon Hampson