Review
Genre and Mood
Christopher Schwarzwälder and Iannis Ritter made High for the club. Discogs files the EP it opens under deep house and tech house, and Beatport lists the track itself as deep house: styles built on a steady pulse and long, gradual change rather than on verses and choruses. Hypnotic and groovy is what those styles aim for, and at almost seven minutes the track is long enough to work that way.
Song Summary
High is the first of three tracks on Three Rivers, a 12-inch EP released on the Berlin label URSL in June 2015 under the catalogue number URSL023, and sold as a download on Beatport later the same month. The “Original Mix” of its title marks it as the producers’ own version, the one any later remix would start from. It runs six minutes and fifty-one seconds. The other two tracks are Flowers Are Green, by the same duo featuring Mo, and Elevator Music, which Schwarzwälder made with David Dorad, featuring Ritter.
Musical Breakdown
No published review describes High section by section, and this review does not invent one; it gives the frame rather than a map. A deep house or tech house track of this length usually starts and ends in a way a DJ can mix, develops by adding and removing layers over a steady kick, and saves its few big moments for when the groove steps aside. Listen for where High follows that pattern and where it does not.
Concepts in Focus
The foundation of deep house is the house groove: a kick on every beat, off-beat hi-hats and claps on two and four, at a tempo a room can dance to for hours. In a track built like High, everything else happens on top of that groove, and the length is there so the dancers can stay inside it.
High also belongs to a particular club culture: small labels, 12-inch vinyl, download stores and DJ sets rather than charts. URSL describes itself on Discogs as a platform for electronic music founded in 2011, based in Berlin, and it released High both on vinyl and as a download for DJs. Compare the way Alec Troniq, GABRIEL VITEL – Faces, from the same year and the same kind of small German label, is made for the middle of a night.
Artistic Context
Christopher Schwarzwälder and Iannis Ritter have worked together beyond this EP. According to MusicBrainz, they released a whole album as a duo, Ritterwald, in August 2016, and another, Out the Window, in 2019; both also release their own tracks under their own names. High comes from the year before the first of those albums, and its video on the label’s own YouTube channel is the simplest way to hear it.
Impact and Reception
High is not a chart record. It is a club track from a small label that has found its listeners through DJ sets and streaming. Give it all seven minutes, at volume, and let the groove do its work.
