Marshall Jefferson: Move Your Body: The Evolution Of Chicago House

It's hard to overstate the greatness of '80s-era Chicago house, but it's easy to lose sight of the movement's place in the big-picture evolution of dance music. Prime Chicago house was hard and metallic, made up of the sleek atmospheres and shadowy funk that would set the template for Detroit techno. But it was also receptive to the grander sweep of outgoing disco, with its gooey warmth and glitzy sizzle. Marshall Jefferson straddles both poles on Move Your Body, an excellent two-disc survey of the genre's means and ends. He starts early with a string of swooning '70s acts–the Earth, Wind & Fire-related band Pockets, Logg (remixed by disco legend Larry Levan), Isaac Hayes–that do with organic guitars, bass, and horns what Chicago house producers would later do with synths and sequencers. Orchestration oozes and vocals swirl on early tracks like Inner Life's "I'm Caught Up (In A One Night Love Affair)," but Jefferson traces a direct line from such stirring bigness to the moody slink dreamt up in the largely black clubs of Chicago's '80s underground. Genre keystones here include Frankie Knuckles' "Your Love," Mr. Fingers' "Can You Feel It," and Adonis' "No Way Back," but Jefferson's deftly mixed backdrop props them up in inspired ways. The pinched synth squeals of so-called acid house (on display here in Phuture's "Acid Tracks" and Sleezy D's "I've Lost Control") sound no less weird now than in 1988, but they play even weirder when crawling out of dusty disco corners. Parts of disc two settle into merely serviceable deep-house, with its diva-drenched soul and Afro-beat saunter. But on the whole, Jefferson charts a mindful, moving journey through the back alleys of Chicago house, from the roots it picked to the seeds it planted.