Norm-a-Lize

Producer and DJ Norm Talley’s career began with his 1997 debut on fellow-Detroit producer Eddie Fowlkes’s City Boy Label. Twenty years later and Talley dropped a debut album on Omar S’s FXHE label and it’s a strong collection. In contrast to the more out-there musical projects sometimes pursued by the FXHE label boss, Talley’s Norm-A-Lize delivers fourteen club-ready, DJ-friendly underground house tracks. Tally’s brand of Detroit house is founded on raw, rolling, driving drum patterns that have years of lived house music history behind them, and built around tasty little Rhodes hooks, sharp bass riffs and glittering, atmospheric sound beds. From jazz-ish and bouncing, to sci-fi-flavoured and pensive, to that carefully controlled brand of elation that Detroit house does so well, he covers a few moods across the fourteen tracks, always keeping everything dance floor focused.