Felix Da Housecat

About Felix Da Housecat

It's become a truism to say Felix Da Housecat has nine lives, but honestly he's probably experienced a lot more than nine times what the average person has. He was present and participating in the birth of house music while still a kid, made anthems for multiple musical movements, remixed everyone from Madonna and Britney Spears to Nina Simone, recorded with Lee "Scratch" Perry, partied with Tommy Lee - and is somehow still standing, older and wiser perhaps, but still as funky, as fired up and as articulate as he ever was. It's almost four decades since he first recorded an electronic bassline, but as his newest material amply demonstrates, his love for the groove is absolutely undimmed. He was offered a rough and ready apartment space in LA last year, he moved down there from Montreal where he’d been living, and immediately flew into one of the wildest creative hot streaks of his life. With the clarity of sobriety, he documented the overwhelm and disorientation of this new environment, and the weirdness and sleaze of the neighbourhood outside his window. His classic new wave seedy glamour was given a new edge of realness – and his production and song structures gained new, sharper edges too. Rather than revisiting past glories, or trying to keep up with the bombast of modern, post-EDM dance music, Felix found he could chase the groove as he’d always done, but realise it more effectively than ever. It didn’t stop there. If his creativity through the party years had been a torrent, now it was a firehose. From his borrowed apartment, he moved to the more refined surrounds of Studio City sharing a house with his friend and continued working at the same relentless rate. The music would become full of LA’s swagger and strangeness, but this time from a confident, settled point of view. His music is a document of personal transformation as much as anything, a rebirth and rediscovery of the stranger corners of the artist’s own mind after the sensory overload of the new city and new creative processes. And so Felix emerges blinking out into the wider world with a truly extraordinary body of work to share. After such a long absence, expectations and scrutiny will obviously be intense, but this music is going to blow a lot of minds. Everything from his previous work is present and correct: the funk, the 80s alienness, the cinematic presentation, the evolving song structures that aren’t beholden to any formula, yet make instant sense whether on headphones or club system, and underlying it all the elemental, eternal house pulse of Chicago. It’s as weird, funny and potent as ever. But somehow it’s bigger, brighter, shinier, sharper, completely ready to compete with any state of the art production of 2024. This isn’t just a return to form, it’s a revelation.