Cult East Coast deep house duo Rarshan Jesrani and Morgan Geist first started recording as Metro Area three years ago and their highly sought after 12"s have been barely brushing the record shop shelves ever since.
Like Moodymann, Metro Area's appeal lies in the minimal but textural quality of their production and a flagrant disregard for high tempo dance floor pleasers. Instead they favour a low-slung groove factor that takes its cue from Seventies and Eighties boogie, funk and disco.
The first proper track on the album, 'Dance Reaction', sticks fast to a simple, heavily funky bass line dug into mid temp four four disco beats. Around this Geist and Jesrani arrange Zap band keyboard flourishes and the odd swell of strings. It's a blissfully simple formula that effortlessly works its way into a swinging groove.
Similarly 'Miura' takes its inspiration from Eighties funk, it's rhythm track relying heavily on hand claps on the second and fourth beats. Again it's infectiously effective and playful.
Where variation and references come in they do so in an understated fashion. For example 'Pina', a distinctly Latin affair, has deliberate overtones of Marley's 'Sun Is Shining' in its offbeat keyboard line.
This gentle familiarity creates an overwhelming warmth in their already velvet production qualities, so that keyboard lines on tracks such as 'Square-Pattern Aura' and the much lauded 'Atmospherique', or the walking bass line on 'Soft Hoop', greet you like old friends.
In this respect Metro Area's sound is reminiscent of the organic audio quality of the great jazz funk masters of old.
Geist and Jesrani have taken the sparse minimal landscape of house and techno and carefully sprinkled elements of rare groove over the top, their expertise being the knowledge that small details stand out far more against a nearly blank canvass.
They have mastered the art of making a little go a long way, and in their hands less is a whole lot more.
