In some respects this is a match made in heaven. Soma is of course a devoted house label and H Foundation, aka Eric Hipp-e Galaviz and Brian 'Halo' Varga not only keep the faith, but they've put a down-payment on the church.
And so it is we get a bit of a surprise on the opening track. 'Environments' is a tight piece of jazz dance. Featuring an unlikely spoken word jazz rap vocal line, the beats skip deliciously over an interchanging instrumental groove, strolling bass lines and breaks.
Your usual Soma house fare this isn't, but then Soma aren't your usual house label and H Foundation aren't your average house act.
'Sol Searchin' locks more tightly into the four four groove and does so around a simple but wholesome bass refrain. 'Tonight' roles in disco diva vocals for variety over a no nonsense drum track that's soon matched by early Nineties bubbly keyboard sound.
It's a promising three-track introduction, but the following tracks go off the boil. 'Nature' enters the comedy-house territory that seems to have taken-off in some areas of house over the last few years and 'Doo Ya', despite a tasty dub bass-line, relies too heavily on synth pad drum sounds for its hook.
This latter may well have made a nice single, but as an album track it supports the discredited cliche that house albums don't work (something that also used to be equally vehemently and wrongly said about hip hop back in the day).
But elsewhere tracks such as 'Feelin', which is in its way just as purist as 'Scenario', take on an element of soul and diversity thanks to Shan Sol R. Carrol's vocal, and Simon Baker's bass line.
'Broken Arrow' adds fired-up jazz courtesy of Scott Tinkler's energetic horn playing and more jumped-up beats, which makes it a bit of a shame that it doesn't appear earlier on in the set. This is equally true of the superbly dirty groove that is 'New Funk Theory'.
Considering there are 12 songs on the CD version, and that each song is cut to an appropriate dancefloor length, it would have done no harm to have trimmed the offerings here and simultaneously broadened the listening experience.
Especially when tracks such as 'New Funk Theory' deserve the space to shine.
