(2551) The ever-reliable Rick Wade returns to Phonogramme following their release of his excellent label debut, Dusk Runner, earlier in 2025. This time round, the long-serving Detroit deep house producer begins with the tight, deep bass loops, snappy and percussion-laden drums, dreamy chords and poetic spoken word snippets of ‘Unafraid’, before exploring a more bumpin’, bass-heavy groove and more loose-limbed garage-house beats on ‘Thank You’. Wade reaches for a thickset beats-and-bass combo on the classic, Rhodes-laden deep house warmth of ‘Functional Anger’, while ‘Hard Peace’ is a lightly disco-flecked, soul-soaked peak-time box jam. Basically, it’s another predictably strong EP from a true master of his craft.

• A1 Unafraid
• A2 Thank You
• B1 Functional Anger
• B2 Hard Peace