On their 2021 mid-pandemic release, Original Classic, Toronto electro-fusionists Keys N Krates reimagined themselves as the globe-trotting, festival-conquering force they weren’t allowed to be during those lonely lockdown days, by pulling influences from Brazil and India and everywhere in between. But on In: Tension, they’re laser-focused on a sound with roots much closer to home: the house music that soundtracked their earliest forays into club culture as teens. “Our approach to house is super-rooted in ’90s stuff like Strictly Rhythm and Masters at Work and Armand Van Helden,” resident DJ Greg Dawson, aka Jr. Flo, tells Apple Music. “We’re hip-hop people at the end of the day, but a lot of the ’90s New York house stuff spoke to us because it had such a hip-hop feel to it, in the way it was made and layered with the chopped-up samples.” However, if In: Tension is a throwback album by design, it also speaks to Keys N Krates’ growing stature in the international dance-music world, as they complement their delirious peak-hour workouts with strategic features from R&B duo LION BABE and pop queen Ciara, among others. Here, Dawson, keyboardist David Matisse, and drummer Adam Tune reveal their intentions for In: Tension, track by track. “Feelin Something” David Matisse: “After the pandemic, I think everyone was feeling kind of numb and weird and dark. And with our music, we want it to be this emotional experience when you’re on the dance floor. It goes deeper than just dancing: You’re here, you’re getting back to being around people, and you’re feeling something again. You’re alive. And it’s the same for us, because we went through a cycle where we had been doing this for a while, and every time you work on an album, you kind of have to reinvent yourself a little bit and get the juices going again. And all three of us struggled at the beginning trying to figure out what we were even trying to do with house music, because we kind of have an outsider’s approach to it. So, a lot of this track is just our own personal expressions of, ‘How do we make songs that we actually feel inspired by and will spark an emotional response from our fans on the dance floor?’” “I Can’t Make You Love Me” [Keys N Krates & Dana Williams] Greg Dawson: “Dana is quite jazzy normally, and I was trying to honor that while getting her out of that zone a little bit—into more of a dance space. We wanted the record to be really empowering. Dana just started saying stuff over the beat, and once the ‘I can’t make you love me’ concept came up, the song kind of wrote itself.” “Fantasy” [Keys N Krates & Ciara] Adam Tune: “We had this demo, and we were like, ‘We would love a vocalist like Ciara on this.’ That was just our reference for the vocal tone. But luckily, we had some connections to actually send Ciara the demo, and she liked it. That’s the best thing—when [the featured artist] just organically loves the song.” “What Girls Do” DM: “We’re talking a lot about house music with this record, but we should really just say ‘dance music’ because throughout all our albums, we never really stick to just one groove. And this one is a bit more Caribbean and Afrobeat-y. For the audio sample, we were just listening to some girl talking to other girls about hair products or something. And she says, ‘This is what you do.’ And then somewhere later she says, ‘Girl,’ so we put ‘This is what girls do’ together from that. And then, we hired a vocalist to say the line with a really cool kind of Southern US voice to get that sass into it. We thought it could be an anthem for girls to rally around when they’re out on the dance floor.” “Get Up” GD: “This one started with the Alice Taylor sample [of the 1975 track ‘Sounds Ridiculous’]. I just heard this string part, and it sounded like it could be a whole tune. So, we just built around that and then brought in that ‘get up’ vocal from something else we recorded. It happened pretty quick—it was real simple.” “Say You Love Me” DM: “We like to dig for samples, and Tracklib is a really cool site for finding bands that have stems. There was a band that had a great song on there with a great singer, and she had that line ‘Say you love me.’ It started with that, because there’s just so much emotion in that line—there was a soul/Motown vibe to the vocal, and when you blend that with a modern/tribal/Afrobeats sound, there’s something fresh and interesting there.” “Overdrive” [Keys N Krates & LION BABE] GD: “We’ve been following LION BABE for a few years and casually DMing each other about doing something. And then, we were going to New York for a show last June, and we knew they were there, so we just pulled up to their studio. We brought in this beat, and we recorded a scratch vocal, and then we went and changed a bunch of stuff in the production and made it more Afrobeat-y with the drums. But they were like, ‘Oh, we really liked the drums you had on the demo,’ so we went back and married some new stuff we did with the chords, drums, and bassline from the original demo, which was much more driving. They were ultimately right about that!” “I Know” GD: “This feels like 3 am in the club—probably in the UK [laughs]. It’s kind of a nod to that energy. We’re talking a lot about Afro stuff and ’90s house, but UK garage was a big influence on this as well. And there’s the contemporary stuff that’s coming out of there, like Joy Orbison—that deep, late-night club sound that’s like a darker version of UK garage. We’ve always loved that.” “Need Your Love” (feat. Taite Imogen) GD: “I was over in the UK, trying to do vocal sessions for us, and I came across Taite, and we started DMing. I loved her voice. She has a great song [‘God Is the Space Between Us’] with Barry Can’t Swim right now that’s huge. And I loved how she sounded on her own stuff, which is much more R&B and soul. So, we got in a room and tried stuff with her, and she was such a lovely human being and an incredible writer and vocalist. We can’t wait to do more stuff with her—she’s amazing.” “Upright Madness” (feat. Aaron Carl) GD: “We ripped Aaron’s vocal off YouTube; we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to clear it. We knew he had passed away [in 2010], but when we looked him up on Discogs, there was a label with an email address, so we thought we could reach his estate through this…and we got nothing. So, then we really went crazy, calling everybody we knew in [Aaron Carl’s hometown of] Detroit, and we thought for sure these people would be able to connect us, and they still weren’t able to. And lo and behold, it was actually one of our friends from Toronto—from The Patchouli Brothers, a disco duo here—who helped connect us to his partner.” “Higher” GD: “This feels like the kind of inspiring dance record you can play when the sun’s coming up at a festival at 6 am. It was made in that spirit. We love the gospel influences on house music. Like our record with Taite, this slots right in between being a UK garage record and a New York house record, paired with us doing stuff with 808s, which is a very classic move for us.” “Final Word” AT: “In the past, we’ve done a lot of interlude stuff, where there’s no drums. For this album, we wanted every track to be something you could play in a DJ set…but we still wanted to put a little something at the end to give it that album feel, because we love the album format and doing the full listen-through.”