Twenty years is a long time between albums. For Roger Sanchez, it has been a lifetime of DJ sets, remixes, and club nights that have kept him at the apex of house music without ever needing to release a full-length record. Spectrum changes that, and it does so with the confidence of someone who has spent two decades refining exactly what he wants to say.
The album arrived on 5 June via his own Stealth Records, and it is emphatically not a nostalgia trip. Written partly during an extended stay in Shoreditch, Spectrum wears its UK influences openly, from the bass-weight of its club tracks to the melodic sensibility that threads through its more reflective moments. The result is a record that moves between moods with the ease of a DJ who has spent a lifetime reading rooms.
Three singles preceded the release, each revealing a different facet. Grinnin, a collaboration with Fedde Le Grand, is big-room house at its most infectious. Come My Way leans into deeper, more hypnotic territory. Temptation, built with Low Steppa and featuring Ragdoll, bridges the gap between groove and vocal-led emotion. All three sit comfortably on the album, but they are only the entry points.
The real discoveries come further in. How Do We Say Goodbye, written with Karen Harding, is the album's standout, a track that rises from trance-like ambience into a climactic drop that feels genuinely earned. Harding's vocal soars over Sanchez's production, which manages to be both anthemic and intimate. Elsewhere, I Don't Wanna Know features Melanie C in a pairing that sounds unlikely on paper but works entirely, while Love Like This with Kele Le Roc brings a soulful warmth that grounds the record's more expansive moments.
For the collectors and the working DJs, Sanchez has prepared a red transparent triple-vinyl edition, available from 26 June, complete with a signed artcard and a download code for an unreleased bonus track. It is the kind of package that suggests Spectrum is not a one-off return but the beginning of a new chapter.
Sanchez takes the record on the road throughout the summer, with his Flower Power residency at Pacha Ibiza running weekly alongside festival appearances across Europe. After 20 years of waiting, the question was always going to be whether the album could justify the gap. Spectrum answers it decisively.
