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Another Side

Electronic / Detroit techno & Chicago house · 1988

Another Side

Fingers Inc.

Why listen

A firm mechanical pulse, sustained harmony and human voices move on different timescales within the same room.

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English editorial edition

Album story

The kick keeps returning to its place while a chord hangs in the air and a voice stretches beyond the beat. Another Side gains depth from those different durations, not simply from adding more sounds. Begin with the repeating low end, then move your attention towards a vocal phrase that hesitates or extends. The pulse gives that movement something to lean against.

This is a Fingers Inc. album, rather than a Larry Heard solo release. Heard worked with Robert Owens and Ron Wilson in the group, whose record appeared on the British Jack Trax label in 1988. Chicago house rhythm and song meet across an extended album. Hearing it only as one producer’s machine experiment misses the vocal relationships; expecting only smoothness misses the friction in the repeating patterns.

More than one surface

Decision opens a sequence that moves between songs such as Never No More Lonely and the instrumental space of Shadows. I’m Strong changes the pressure within the same broad rhythmic language. Later come Mystery Of Love, A Path, Bring Down The Walls and Can You Feel It. Arriving at the familiar closing track through the preceding voices and spaces gives repetition more than a single dance-floor function.

Warmth does not remove the edges

Deep house need not mean comfortable background music. Sustained chords can sound soft while drum attacks remain firm and a repeating bass keeps pressing forward. A voice does not make the machine disappear; it introduces another kind of movement beside it. Establish the beat, then hear how the vocal lengthens or sidesteps that reference. The emotional change does not require every part to change together.

Choose the complete programme

Releases bearing this title have different contents. The linked Japanese Apple Music edition, distributed by P-VINE, contains the original sixteen-track programme; a twelve-track digital edition omits the final four selections. The full sequence lasts roughly ninety minutes. Divide it into smaller stretches if needed, but retain the order. On another pass, attend first to passages without singing and notice how the return of a voice changes your relationship to the pulse.

The album through its tracks

Follow the different lengths of the beat, sustained chords and vocal phrases.

  1. Never No More Lonely

    A vocal line extends while the rhythmic floor remains relatively fixed, making a small inflection feel substantial. Third in the sixteen-track sequence, this song brings the vocal dimension forward for anyone approaching the record as a collection of machine patterns. The title’s movement away from loneliness need not register as uncomplicated brightness. Take a repeating bass or kick as your reference, then hear the distance a phrase creates when it ends. Once the refrain becomes familiar, shift towards the sustaining keyboard sound behind it. Because everything does not move at once, small changes remain perceptible. The attraction is in the coexistence of an expressive voice and an unyielding rhythmic frame.

    Reference · Apple Music Japan/P-VINE: complete16track Alleviated edition

  2. Distant Planet

    Separate the expansive keyboard space from the close, recurring rhythm and the title’s distance becomes a useful listening image. Ninth in the complete programme, this track has its own span rather than merely filling time before the familiar closing selections. Establish the pulse first, then attend to where the more sustained sounds end. Alternating between short attacks and lingering resonance can make the same passage seem near or far. That is an interpretation, not a claim about a documented space concept or a particular instrument. Let the title suggest a route through the arrangement: repetition can change the apparent size of a space while preserving a danceable reference point.

    Reference · Apple Music Japan/P-VINE: complete16track Alleviated edition

Listen next

Compare Phuture’s Acid Tracks for a different use of timbre and repetition within Chicago house.

Acid Tracks ↗
References & editorial note

Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.