The Pop Corporation

House music is, for the most part, all about the hypnotic swing and MDMA enhancing repetitiveness, maybe with a little vocal hook to keep you singing along.

Sometimes however, when House is given the due care and attention it deserves, it can sound like the most expensive thing in the world, with luxurious, modern production, and real, living songs interwoven through the grooves.

Some of the genre’s greats have been all about that, like Masters At Work, Todd Terry, Daft Punk, Roger Sanchez, Marshall Jefferson and so many more – seamlessly melding disco, electronic music, R&B, and forward thinking dance music to make music that truly endures.

Add to that list, Rochelle Jordan.

We first became aware of Jordan’s work in 2014, making some genuinely fine R&B with the ‘1021’ album, but then Rochelle went away before taking a left turn for the better, and surprised us with the sorely underrated ‘Play With Them Changes’, which moved away from the dreamy, psychedelic R&B, and moved toward broken beats, touches of drum n bass, and utterly irresistible four-to-the-floor house.

By the time this album cycle had come around, Jordan had dropped a bunch of singles in advance of this latest cut, that showed that the last LP was no fluke.

The production got deeper, richer and lead track ‘Crave’ sounded like the best house release anyone’s heard in the best part of a decade.

While Jordan hails from Canada (by way of the UK), the new stuff is steeped in the deep groove of Chicago House and NYC ballroom. It’s endlessly smart and sophisticated, but it’s also fun-as-hell, lending itself equally well to dancing with a couple of hundred people as it is vibing out on the commute.

Good music makes you feel ten feet tall wherever you are, and Rochelle’s new album does exactly that.

While you might find yourself scrambling around for reference points in the songs in a bid to get to know them better, if you let yourself go and get carried away, you’ll find an album that shows the artist being most herself to date.

We all know that dance music can be all about the singles, and lack a certain amount of personality in favour of a viral hit – which is no bad thing – but that’s not the case here.

‘Through The Wall’, when it boils down to it, is absolutely bursting at the seams with Rochelle’s individuality. Sure, it’ll remind you of a lot of great music, but there’s not an album around quite like this one, and we all need to cotton on to the fact that Rochelle has made a modern classic.

The singles all slap, and in the slower, softer, more seductive moments like ‘Never Enough’, ‘Get It Off’ and ‘Bite The Bait’, you’re likely to think about Aaliyah in her finest mid-tempo come-ons, while ‘Close 2 Me’ is a solid gold banger with a UKG bassline that demands to be played out of the dirtiest soundsystem at carnival.

Start to finish, this is a confident and assured album and we’ll be damned if we hear a more perfect album in 2025.

If you want to know how great Rochelle is, switching from lighter than air vocals to a swaggering rap, backed by a killer shuffle beat and Crystal Waters vocal tic, just listen to ‘Ladida’, and think about all the basement raves that would blow up in it’s presence.

A great album is one that straddles the line of treating each song like a single, while also being a cohesive journey and ebbs and flows.

‘Through The Wall’ ticks all those boxes and is the sound of an artist not bothered by trivial things like trending topics and silly fads – Rochelle whether she intended to or not, has made a timeless, classic album that deserves all the praise and rave reviews.

In a cut-throat music world where she’s neither alt R&B or pop, not Tomorrowland roller-coaster music, or needy virality, you hope that some wrinkle in fate allows Rochelle to buck the trend, and have a hit on her hands simply by the sheer quality of the music she’s served up here.

This album doesn’t grab you by the collar and demand your attention like that. There’s a quietness that surrounds Rochelle because it seems she wants to let the music do the talking for her.

Maybe she’s an old soul like that? If that’s the case, it’s the job of her fans and reviews like this one to pour praise and enthusiasm all over it, because we can’t imagine there’s anyone worth their salt who wouldn’t get a massive kick out of this album.

Utterly perfect, infectious, feminine, intelligent, sexy, strong, irresistible and absolutely a contender for the best album we’ll hear this year.

Sleep on Rochelle Jordan at your peril.