Robert Owens – I'll Be Your Friend

Stone cold classic house 12". Morales production is just superb.

This track never did anything for me...WAY too repetitious even by dance music standards. So many better house classics out there that actually *go* somewhere.

The only version of this I remotely liked was the 7" Radio, cause it's less repetitious and has instrumentation that isn't in the other versions.

At the time this came out this was a like a breath of fresh air. I'd actually begun to get a bit disenchanted with the club music / house scene around 1991 - the records seemed to lack depth compared with the preceding glory years of 87-90. 1991 seamed to be a sea of dodgy hip house, Italo piano screamers and early breakbeat. Aside from some very underground tracks from the likes of MK and Roger Sanchez the overall mood of 1991 seemed ever so slightly cheesy. Then towards the end of the year this dropped. With its dubbed out drums richoteting out of the speakers, deep baseline, haunting synth harmonica lines and a magical emotive vocal from Mr Owens himself. Pure bliss. It also seemed to herald a return to depth in dance music with tracks by Jovonn, Michael Watford, Murk, dj Pierre, the Burrell Brothers appearing around the same time. I actually met Robert Owens when he was djing at the Hacienda around 1994 - I told him how much I loved his music and he thanked me for coming to see him. Such a lovely man.