Larry Heard

When you're a living legend like Larry Heard, you're allowed to be out of touch with the scene you helped pioneer; in fact, it's only then that you really begin to express yourself. The latest from the Chicago house innovator (now relocated to Memphis) is a collection of after-hours music. The tempos shift from garage to R&B to ballads with an underlying thread of moody romanticism. Comparable to A:xus's Soundtrack 4 Life, the songs on Love's Arrival are composed with a sound of solitude and intimacy, and often they make you feel like you're in a dream rather than on a dance floor. The production is characteristically Fingers: gorgeous atmospheres, superfluous keyboard solos and Heard's androgynous, vocal moan. Tracks like "Praise" and "When I Think of You" flow with endless reverence, while "Missing You" and "Until The Last Goodbye" succumb to a sentimentalism that's just atrocious, but on the whole, the feel is just lovely