Marcel Winatschek

This Is Love, or Something That Works Just as Well

Skin—Deborah Anne Dyer, when she’s not fronting Skunk Anansie—has a voice built for exactly this kind of track. If This Ain’t Love, produced by Erick Morillo and Eddie Thoneick, gives her room to work over a house groove that doesn’t overcomplicate itself: a rolling kick, a melodic hook, the kind of architecture that exists purely to support the vocal. Morillo at this point was operating at the peak of his international reach, and his instinct for what makes a room move was impeccable. The track is a reminder that house music, for all its sophistication, has always been most alive when it’s asking you to feel something obvious and enormous and let that be enough.