Soul Quest Records returns with Maintain Altitude 2, a six-track VA release built around deep house, jazz house, and broken beat, out June 12 on vinyl, digital, and streaming.
The compilation follows the label’s original Maintain Altitude concept and keeps the focus on soulful club music with a London-centered pulse, even as the roster stretches outward through Amsterdam, Lisbon, and other corners of the scene. The result is a release that feels built for dancers, selectors, and anyone who still wants house music to have musicianship sitting right inside the groove.
Slxm Sol opens the release with “Lead The Way” featuring Legzdina, a warm and vocal-led deep house cut shaped around Rhodes chords, low-end movement, and a late-night feel that fits naturally into Soul Quest’s identity. It sets the tone without trying to overstate itself, which is often the best way for a VA release like this to begin.
Jazz, Broken Beat, And House In Conversation
Max Sinàl and KingCrowney follow with “A Bit Mad,” and this is where the compilation starts to lean harder into the live-feeling side of the label. KingCrowney’s trumpet gives the track its own personality, while Max Sinàl’s production keeps the rhythm loose enough to feel human without losing the club function.
Misto Kay’s “Bruklynn” brings a different kind of bounce, with jazz-rooted keys and off-center rhythmic turns that give the track a playful feel. It is a good reminder that broken beat and jazz house are at their best when they leave a little room for the unexpected, especially when the groove still holds everything together.
Berkeley Hunt’s “Speed Jazz” pushes the compilation into a dustier and more high-pressure space. Swung drums, chopped samples, and synth lines give it a sharper edge, and the track feels made for DJs who want something that can shift the room without fully stepping away from the release’s soul-driven center.
A Compilation With A Clear Label Thread
Real Love Seeker returns with “Mood Swings,” tapping into a 90s house feeling that brings Mood II Swing-style energy into a cleaner modern context. It is soulful and driving, with the kind of directness that can be easy to underestimate until it is doing exactly what it needs to do in a room.
Streeton closes the release with “Ride” featuring Faro, bringing the compilation back toward broken beat and vocal-led songwriting. Faro’s vocal gives the track a more intimate final stretch, while the instrumentation keeps it grounded in organic rhythm and club movement.
This is also where Maintain Altitude 2 reminds me of a recurring idea from our SIDEPIECE interview on listening again, where the bigger takeaway was that producers can spend so much time analyzing music that they forget how to respond to it like listeners. A release like this is useful because it rewards that more instinctive kind of listening. You do not have to flatten every track into genre tags or DJ utility. You can hear the Rhodes voicings, the trumpet lines, the swung drums, the vocal moments, and the pocket of each track, then let the record tell you where it belongs in a set.
Soul Quest has always felt best when it treats soulful club music as something active rather than nostalgic, and Maintain Altitude 2 continues that idea with a roster of artists who know how to keep the floor moving while still leaving enough personality in the details.
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
