[Echovolt Records]

The Italian producer Nick Simoncino has been making waves the last couple of years with a highly prolific schedule of faithfully old-school house releases. For the WereHouse EP, he’s teamed up with the Greek Echovolt label. Although it’s only five releases deep at this point, Simoncino is a perfect fit for their catalog, a clear stylistic peer to the likes of Steve Summers and Legowelt, the latter of whom turns up on remix duty here.

“Chicago” is, as one might presume, a classicist house cut through and through, loaded with jacking toms, snares, rimshots, and creeping pads. “Ocean” works on similar principles, but it’s suffused with the sounds of seabirds and waves. The rolling, silvery tom patterns are a well-considered move, and even conceptually, the idea of old-school house on the beach is a really pleasant vibe; it’s not hard to imagine this track playing in Ibiza in the late 80s. On the flip, “WereHouse” sounds tailor made for some Danny Wolfers involvement, between its tough, melodic bass line, androgynous vocal coo (“WereHouse” equals werewolf, get it?), and Italo-esque synth parts. Legowelt’s remix essentially tightens the original — the bass line isn’t so elongated, and the drums have more of a propulsive bump — but the atmosphere remains much the same. There’s a lot of this sort of house around at the moment, and certainly nothing here is that groundbreaking, but as a fleshed-out and perhaps spacier complement to classic dance production ideals, it totally succeeds.