Latrice Barnett, with the help of major house producers Jay J and Kaskade, has made a nice little album for people looking for chilled-out deep house. Nu soul fans will be familiar with her work in the group 5 Point Plan ("Second Time" is still stirring every time I hear it) and dance fans should know her voice given the 16 charting singles on which she has sung on and/or co-written.
Illuminate definitely is dominated by a house approach but there are enough variances in beat structures that the listener's ears are not worn out by the monotony that often plagues records in this genre. There's hints at the spaced-out trips of 808 State with the spoken word "Déjà vu," there's a gospel-flavored groove on "Bless this House" (which I'm guessing the title is a bit of a double meaning), while "Lessons Learned" is a step away from house and step towards the R&B feel that 5 Point Plan did so smoothly. Jay J's "Make my Heart" (featured on last year's Groove Junkies House of Om mix) has a heavy jazz feel to it, with Latrice showing off her vocals a little more than on other tracks with her matching note-for-note the be-bop guitar here and there.
"Take it from here" has to be the most sexually frustrating track of the year with our vocalist pouring on the sultry sugar as she serenades some lucky bastard with the words "Babe, tell me what you want tonight/tell me what you need and I/I'll take it from here…" (Does anyone know if Latrice has a penchant for record reviewers?). If it was up to this reviewer to pick out the strongest single, "Love is" would be the clear choice because it seems to be the perfect culmination of all that is clever about the album as whole- which is the layering of Latrice's vocals, creating a symphony of sweet unwavering main melodies while soul notes weave in and out of the set notes with easy variance.
Fans of Tortured Soul, Angela Johnson, Om and Naked Music should be quite pleased with this one.
