Nookie – Only You

On Goldies Ministry comp , with other great tunes for £20 bargain
. . . . . . . .

Blindingly good release this. Some of the best music to come out of the genre for me. "only you" is great to give the dance floor a refreshing break from chaotic amens, to then of course bring them straight back in again after lol!. "celebrate life" is just wonderful, a tame and pleasant amen tune that just rolls and rolls beautifully. 2 top tunes i can't choose between. cherish if you have this!

"Only You" is a 'killer' track... Remember hearing this down at SPEED (Fabio and Bukem's night that used to be held down at the Mars Bar on Sutton Row just off Soho Square in London) a year or so before it was released. If I remember rightly... Bukem dropped it in a two hour closing set... And "bwoy" did it kick up a storm! That bass was thumpin' through the JBLs, washing into our mind streams... What a mover! Seems Nookie has always been making tracks that were way ahead of their time... And, to be fair, until SPEED arrived in the mid nineties, there just really hadn't been any regular place/night/club/venue/date that one could go to to hear tracks like this being played out back to back, week after week! Honest...

No doubt Nookie (a.k.a. Gavin Cheung) has managed to recycle that electric piano sound over and over again in his music... And despite this track taking me back to some of his earlier musical ideals - as heard in "Give A Little Love" and, particularly, "Shinning In The Darkness" - it still manages to keep an original tip, letting some new, subtle variations on great creative mementos flow throughout into another original groove... Nookie down to a T.

But, in my humble opinion, the track to watch for here is "Celebrate Life". Again... Played quite a bit down at SPEED... Starting with a minimalist intro... One that uses a sort of synthesised flute melody to counter some friendly advise in the form of a male sample, uttering diligently... "Music is the basis of all life... Without music, we have no meaning... No joy... And no soul. It comes from the inner most thoughts... {DEEP INSIDE!} And emotions. Music is a celebration of life... CELEBRATE LIFE!" Which gives way to some great Nookie style drum programming and layering... Hashed up breaks roll over those accentuated beats and carefully crafted chops... All combined with a minimal piano chord riff that glues the whole track together, there are some great break downs, and some neat build ups that work some interesting little moments into its flowing time line... Certainly Mr Cheung's drum programming is worth checking out here for any Nookie fan.

All in all for me... A classic upbeat Reinforced released. 5/5