Marcus Watkins presents For Those Who Crave
There is a particular kind of house music that understands restraint as a form of movement. It does not need the obvious drop, the oversized hook or a constant stream of new ideas to justify its existence. Instead, it works through accumulation: a bassline settling into place, percussion gradually revealing its weight, a chord appearing at precisely the right moment. For Those Who Crave, Marcus Watkins’ three-track release for Du.Me Records, belongs firmly to this tradition.
Across “Voices from Above”, “Da Gojo” and “49 Revolutions Around the Sun”, Watkins operates in the spacious territory between deep house, soulful house and the more atmospheric end of the Midwest continuum. The EP was released on September 25 and keeps its tempo deliberately measured, with the three tracks sitting between 116 and 118 BPM.
The opening track, “Voices from Above”, establishes the EP’s central language almost immediately. At 116 BPM, it has the patience of a track designed for a room rather than a playlist: the groove is allowed to breathe, with the emphasis placed on subtle shifts in texture and rhythm rather than dramatic structural changes. There is warmth here, but it is not nostalgia for its own sake. Watkins’ Chicago roots are present in the way the rhythm remains central, while the spaciousness and attention to atmosphere point towards his later Detroit-oriented sensibility.
“Da Gojo” pushes the record slightly further into motion. At 118 BPM, it is the most obviously functional cut of the three, but “functional” should not be mistaken for anonymous. Its appeal comes from the tension between repetition and detail. Watkins understands that a groove can remain hypnotic without becoming static, and the track gains its character from the small changes that accumulate around its core. It is the kind of house music that rewards DJs willing to let a track develop rather than treating it as something that needs to announce itself within the first thirty seconds.
Then comes “49 Revolutions Around the Sun”, the EP’s longest piece and arguably its most reflective moment. The F-sharp minor tonality and slightly darker harmonic character give it a different emotional weight from the preceding tracks. The title itself suggests a personal sense of time passing, and the music seems to respond accordingly: less concerned with immediate impact than with creating an environment in which repetition becomes meditative.
What makes For Those Who Crave interesting within Watkins’ recent output is the sense of continuity behind it. His discography has increasingly moved between deep, soulful and more abstract forms of electronic music rather than settling into a single stylistic formula. Earlier in 2026, his Cybernetic Serenade release was described in terms of a more futuristic and abstract approach, while Watkins himself has spoken about resisting rigid genre definitions in favour of music that retains groove and emotional meaning.
That versatility is useful context here. For Those Who Crave is not trying to reinvent deep house, nor does it need to. Its strength is in understanding the genre as a living vocabulary rather than a fixed template. Watkins takes familiar materials—steady four-to-the-floor rhythms, restrained melodic phrases, spacious production—and gives them enough room to develop their own atmosphere.
There is also something quietly old-school about the EP’s patience. In an era when dance music is increasingly edited around immediacy, these are tracks that seem to assume the listener has time. Six and seven minutes are not treated as obstacles to overcome; they are part of the point. The music can sit comfortably inside a DJ set, but it also works as a more private form of listening, particularly when the rhythmic elements begin to blur into the surrounding atmosphere.
For Those Who Crave ultimately feels less like a statement than a continuation of a long-running conversation between Chicago house, Detroit futurism and the soulful side of contemporary deep house. Watkins does not overload the tracks with ideas. Instead, he trusts groove, space and gradual development—the fundamentals that have kept house music relevant for decades.
For listeners looking for maximalism, there may not be enough drama here. For those who understand that a great house track can reveal itself slowly, Watkins offers something more durable: three patient, well-shaped grooves that are equally at home in the booth and in the headphones.
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