The German brothers Ali and Basti Schwarz of Tiefschwarz are finally back with their third studio album; Chocolate. It’s their first proper album in five years, and it’s released on their own label Souvenir Records. Philipp Maier aka Santé co-produced the album, and is a third member of Tiefschwarz. Guest features include Cassy, Seth Troxler, Dave Aju and the new talent Daniel Wilde. Tiefschwarz, famous for their remixes, know how to move a dance floor, and over the past few years they have moved away from electro-fused cuts and gone to the deeper side, something which can be heard all over their hypnotic new album. They’ve both reinvented themselves, and gone back to their house roots. Chocolate mirrors their musical development and experiences of the past few years, and breathes sweaty club vibes, deep house, minimal, techno and a dash of jazz and tribal. Their new album is highly dynamic, and their genre blending aesthetics and diversity works without turning it in to a soup of sounds.

Chocolate kicks off with the deep and warm “Home” featuring Daniel Wilde, who sounds like David Bowie over a steady bass beat. It’s followed by “Kraft,” a hypnotic and bouncy, almost Jesse Rose sounding techno track with a female voice sample. “Black Tick” is a strong jacking tribal cut, with tabla sounding programing and acoustic guitar samples. “Bon Voyage” is an unexpected ambient jazz cut, with piano chords that could’ve been taken from Radiohead. An alternative freeform version of “Trust” featuring Seth Troxler follows; a weird loungy cabaret jazz stomper, somewhere in between St. Germain and Herbert, featuring a melodica. A highlight of the album is the deep & tecky recent single “Find Me”, featuring the ghostly vocals of Cassy. The album should’ve ended here, because the quality falls towards the album’s end, most notably with a track called “The Whistler”. I don’t understand the purpose of this track with silly repetitive whistling, especially comparing it to the stupidly brilliant track with the same name by Claude VonStroke.

Chocolate is Tiefschwarz most accomplished, adventurous and versatile album, it is has a great balance between dancing and listening tracks, and that’s one of their biggest strengths. They prove that they’re still expanding the parameters of modern dance music.  But cutting from 16 to 12 tracks would’ve made a great difference, and likemost producers working out of Berlin, they have mind-blowing bass production, but unfortunately the lyrics are often cheesy

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