Cloonee's Tech House Debut LP 'Are You Still You?' Is Here

Tech house has always worked better as a singles format. Compressed, dancefloor-ready, four to six minutes of exactly what the genre promises — a thick low-end, looping bass hook, a breakdown that opens the room. Albums are a different kind of ask. They demand a point of view that holds across sixteen tracks and sixty-odd minutes, and in a genre built around immediacy, that's a trickier proposition than it sounds. Cloonee's debut, Are You Still You?, takes the question at face value — and mostly answers it in the affirmative.

Hellbent Records and a 16-Track Runway

Released October 6 on Good Music For Bad People and his own Hellbent Records imprint, the album is a sixteen-track statement from a producer who has spent the past few years making some of tech house's most commercially and critically reliable singles. Cloonee — UK-born, now LA-based — built Hellbent Records alongside his own output, signing acts and developing a label aesthetic rooted in accessible but club-credible house. The debut LP is both his personal statement and the most coherent argument for what that imprint stands for.

Collaborations That Earn Their Place

The guest list is extensive, but it earns its keep. 'Good Girl' with Prospa and Tristan Henry arrived as the album's lead single and went straight to number one on Beatport — their second chart-topper together in 2026 — and it still sounds like the club weapon it was designed to be. 'Don't You Want Me' with Chris Lorenzo is synth-driven and high-energy, two producers whose rhythmic sensibilities push against each other productively rather than landing in each other's way.

'It's Time' with Joseph Capriati brings an acid-ish synth line through a groove that's tighter and more propulsive than much of the album — the most overtly underground moment on a record that otherwise skews toward peak-time accessibility. 'Movimiento', a collab with Yandel and ATLAC, takes a rolling, highly syncopated Latin-esque direction that might read as a crossover attempt but lands with enough dancefloor gravity to hold its place in the sequence. 'Catch Me In Amsterdam' with Sirolf and 'Get Up And Dance' — an album ID that the room has been demanding in sets for months — finally has a release to point to.

Best track title of 2026: 'Nobody Likes The Records That You Play', a Tocadisco collab built on sharp beats, nursery-rhyme synth plinks and squelching bass. It's self-deprecating in a way that suits the album's overall tone — Cloonee isn't interested in being taken too seriously, and the music doesn't suffer for it.

Does 16 Tracks Work?

The core template throughout is Cloonee's established one: big, clean kicks, weighted bass patterns with enough low-shelf to do damage on a proper system, and breakdowns engineered for cathartic peak-time drops. What varies is the texture and the energy level. The album moves through flavours without losing its identity, which is the defining challenge of any long-form dance music release. Almost every track here functions as a standalone single while also serving the arc of a full listen — a balance that's harder to execute than it sounds when the music has to clear a dancefloor rather than soundtrack a listening session.

Tech House's Album Moment

Autumn 2026 has become, unexpectedly, something of a tech house long-player season. Are You Still You? drops alongside debut LPs from Eli Brown and MK, and follows Roza Terenzi's RUST album from last week. The pattern suggests that after years of singles-first dominance, the scene's most prominent producers are ready to bet on the format. Whether that's confidence or critical ambition is secondary to what the music actually delivers — and in Cloonee's case, what it delivers is a producer who has figured out how to hold a room for sixty minutes without pretending to be anyone other than himself.

Find the album on Beatport, Apple Music and all major platforms. Full release details at Beatportal and the DJ Mag review.