Masters At Work: Our Time Is Coming

Strictly speaking, the template for deep-house hasn't changed much since the disco era: It sticks to a steady diet of four-four rhythms and ecstatic bursts of jazzy gospel soul. As the duo Masters At Work, "Little Louie" Vega and Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez helped set the template in stone, but they've also diffused the details enough to keep it vital. Unimpeachable kings of the New York dance underground, Vega and Gonzalez cook up a zesty hometown dish with Our Time Is Coming, a quintessential soundtrack for the city's dreamy culture swirl. The album-opening "Like A Butterfly (You Send Me)" floats on the kind of deliriously infectious groove that has filled deep-house with quasi-religious airs for hip-hop heads and disco holdovers alike. "Backfired" features defiant diva vocals by La India, who turns a tale of heartbreak into a hands-in-the-air recovery anthem as she finds her way through a field of sashaying funk and hi-hat snap. More than most dance producers, Masters At Work invests club tracks with shifty structures that work just as well as songs. The album's title track trickles through a puddle of vibe riffs (courtesy of Roy Ayers) that wet a street-corner conversation between giggling keyboards and winking bass. On "Work," that conversation gets pared down to sweaty grunts, as Denise Belfon toasts a Jamaican invitation to sweep her "yard" with an ever-allegorical "broom." Our Time Is Coming might sound preposterous to those with reactionary allegiances to "disco sucks" orthodoxy, but it offers a working lesson in the ways dance music streams naturally from the psychic simmer of city life. Charting its way past deli-front domino games, chanting jump-rope circles, and Nuyorican street parades, the album winds up at the kind of celebratory New York deep-house parties that make life worth living, one night at a time.