Piston serves up yet more superb deep house with a collaboration between Lights Electronika and Valeria Croft with their Connections EP. This not the first time these guys have been together, they have joined forces on labels like Wasabi and Minim.all, and they are also no strangers to Piston Recordings with a few releases under their belts.

Residing between Helsinki and St Petersburg Lights Electronika aka Max & Leon have been prominent producers since towards the end of the nineties. In 1999 they parted ways with each going on to learn more and more about music and become better producers. Leon pursued D n B and Max began to DJ, they came back together and Lights Electronika was ready to unleash more of their unique style of house.

Valeria Croft is a Russian producer and DJ, she has enjoyed many gigs around Europe and Asia and has a nice collection of releases to her name. She was more into a housey style but has moved into the deep house and funky side. She teamed up with Max & Leon in 2010 and a steady flow of popular tracks followed.

First up we have the title track Connections which can only be described as funky deep house, real cool vintage drums and percs with an almost bouncy bassline. Loads of FX fill up the space on this track and add extra weight, there is a spoken vocal coming in that works very well with the track.

Awesome People continues on the funky deep vibes, you can pick up on the unique vintage style of this track from the kicks and percussions, brilliant stuff. The tune builds slowly and then a killer crisp hat takes centre stage over a cool bassline and a Jamaican type vocal sample, again the FX are high quality and fit nicely into the tune.

Chilie is a much more melodic track with lots of different layers on the synths coming together to deliver a fine deep house vibe, very gritty sounds on the percs and a deep deep bassline. Real laid back groove on this and one that will keep you hooked into the many sounds that raid your senses.

Tuba Jam takes a route into the world of simply amazing drum and percussion arrangement, listen as the complex maze of sounds are perfectly crafted into an almost tribal feeling deep house joint. Great deep bassline turns funky little riffs and a melancholic string plays sweetly in the background. On the break the strings take centre stage until the track kicks back with an infectious rhythm.