Bimini Road

Anjunadeep, an offshoot of Above & Beyond’s totemic trance label Anjunabeats, started out as an outlet for moody progressive house and gradually evolved into a major force in the deep-house resurgence of the 2010s. Then along came First Landing, the 2017 debut by Brooklyn producer Moon Boots, aka Pete Dougherty, which pointed the label toward hitherto uncharted territory: soulful nu-disco. There’s plenty of that here on Bimini Road—particularly the title track, a slow-motion swirl of strings, piano, and space-disco effects—but Moon Boots’ second album keeps broadening horizons, opening up to include silky R&B, ’80s pop-soul, and even skippy UK garage. When he turns his attention to deep house, the rich keys and gospel influences frequently conjure ’90s New York. You can trace elements of Moon Boots’ seven-person live show in his stacked vocal harmonies and finely tuned arrangements—his basslines are particularly captivating. Titled after an underwater site in the Bahamas that some call the lost city of Atlantis, Bimini Road is an architectural survey of the past few decades of club music, peeling away the layers to build a scale model of paradise.