We were always fascinated by electronic music…we’re kids of the ‘80s.

This radio interview excerpt, dropped amidst the introduction to “Charlotte,” the newest single by Booka Shade, is a statement both of revelation and intent. Immediately following the sample is a slap-back synth-line, the kind of simple yet oh-so-satisfying waveform riffage you often hear from younger artists discovering the joys of digital signal processing and analog synthesis. To say that a house act like Booka Shade are “fascinated” by electronic music…well, yes, of course. But, Booka Shade are also a refined set of gentlemen whose music is more likely to soundtrack a seductively well-dressed club crowd than a wild group of sweaty teenagers.

Reading further—perhaps more than was intended—into this statement, you get a glimpse at the way Booka Shade’s influences are manifesting. Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier are kids of the ‘80s ethos; of a time when electronic music wasn’t exclusively relegated to its own (broad and muddled) categories. An era before “electronica” or “return of rock” bands, when synthesizers were new and futuristic, and everyone wanted a piece of them. Keeping this in mind, the sensitive, almost-songs present on the new Booka Shade release, The Sun & The Neon Light, make a great deal of sense. For Merziger and Kammermeier, being a deep house act doesn’t preclude them from expanding into other realms.

For the purposes of “Charlotte,” however, the duo are more than happy to chug along with a generally within-the-lines house track. And what a house track it is! Booka Shade have opened the synth-sound makeup drawer, and they’re more than happy to try on all different shades of sound—backward ambient pads, squelchy high plinks, punchy square and saw wave basses, and a series of squeals, all filter-tweaked to the edge and back. It harkens back to one of the most interesting properties of a synthesizer: it’s an instrument that one can, with relatively little training, get some interesting sounds out of just by taking the time to explore. Of course, Booka Shade understand well what they’re doing, but, particularly in the course of their sometimes-flat new album, it’s nice to have this explosion of (precisely crafted) youthful abandon.

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