Pasa Tempos

Music by Mr. Fingers and Prins Thomas

Dance music history lesson here. In the mid-1980s, a South Side Chicago DJ known alternately as Larry Heard or Mr. Fingers pioneered deep house, a new genre which blended the icy futurism of Detroit techno with the lush, gospelinflected disco beats then prevalent in the black and Latino gay clubs of Chicago. Thirty years later, Heard is still making engaging new music, while some of his classics, like his 1986 banger, “Can You Feel It?” remain in club floor rotation. It would be an appropriate time for a Heard revival now that EDM has so enchanted the Top 40. But most of Mr. Fingers’ productions remain both too street and too cerebral for pop radio. Composed of just four long tracks, this album features “Qwazars,” a blissfully airy mix of high-hats and fizzling deep house beats, its sci-fi sheen accented by a bit of sampled dialogue from celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson waxing poetic on these distant clusters of galactic light. Jamaican dub and cowbell clangs ring throughout “Nodyahead,” while the closing track, “Aether,” uses filtered piano riffs and lumbering bass lines to create a contemplative nightcap track. Though this music is clearly built on the dance harmonics of his famed 1980s work, nothing here comes across as nostalgic. Instead, Heard finds himself working diligently to prove that house music can do more than thump and bounce on the dance floor; it can coax serenity and bliss out of its listeners. — Casey Sanchez