review
DJ Pierre's What Is House Muzik turns 30, and the dub wins
The original still holds up at under ten minutes, but this reissue's real event is the Ricardo Villalobos dub, thirty-six minutes finally free of vinyl after a decade.
deepmelodic
Nine minutes and forty-nine seconds, and the kick never once lets up. That's the original mix on DJ Pierre's What Is House Muzik, remastered for its 30th anniversary as Get Physical's 800th release, out October 23rd on vinyl and digital. The record's real event isn't that original, though. It's the Ricardo Villalobos dub — thirty-six minutes and forty-six seconds, digital for the first time. Ten years overdue.
DJ Pierre's name got made a decade before this track existed, in Phuture, on "Acid Tracks" — the record most histories credit with starting acid house. What Is House Muzik is solo, from 1994, and it's Wild Pitch at its most direct. A kick that hits hard enough to carry a room on its own, and hi-hats mixed in loud rather than tucked back. The vocal's a monologue that still plays like a mission statement three decades on. The remaster doesn't touch any of that. Thirty years hasn't changed the argument. Not one bit.
The dub's the standout, and it earns that spot the hard way. Nothing about this track sounds tired at thirty. What's shifted is the patience on the other side of the speaker, and that's exactly why the dub matters more now than it did in 2014. Thirty-six minutes reads as a lot to ask of a room raised on skip buttons. It's also exactly what an overcaffeinated year needs: a throwback built to be settled into together rather than sampled through, made for a long blend on rotary mixers rather than a quick cue-up. Villalobos cut it in 2014 for a vinyl-only Get Physical pressing, and it's sat there since. The kind of record a resident plays at 5am and you spend the next decade trying to find. Vocal snippets drift in and out under processing rather than sitting up front. The kick gets pulled back to a suggestion for long stretches. By the time the tempo settles into the patient, unhurried pace Villalobos records usually take, you've forgotten there was ever a faster version. Thirty-six minutes, and it earns every one of them. It plays less like a remix of the original and more like he borrowed the vocal and built his own record around it. The full run's on YouTube if the Bandcamp stream cuts out before it settles.
Pair the two and you've got a night's worth out of one title. We'd run the nine-minute original early, as a way in, and build toward the dub rather than the other way round. Nine minutes is already a commitment on a dancefloor. Thirty-six's a different kind of listening, built for a system and a crowd rather than headphones on a train. Close on the dub and the reissue's used the way it's built to be used.
Get Physical built most of its catalogue on new artists, and its 800th release goes the other way instead, reissuing a track older than half the label's current roster and betting that pairing DJ Pierre, an acid house originator, against Villalobos, whose own catalogue barely touches acid, makes for a stronger anniversary statement than most reissues manage. Not a museum piece. Raw material, handed to someone from a completely different lineage. The dub deserved a wider release long before this. Now it has one.
Thirty years on, What Is House Muzik still answers its own question in under ten minutes. The dub takes six times as long to say something else entirely, and that's the version worth going back to.
Stream What Is House Muzik via Get Physical Music or on Spotify. Follow DJ Pierre on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and SoundCloud.