Patrice Scott is one of deep house’s most reliable operators. The Detroit-based producer almost always seems in command of his tools, and has honed in on a powerful, astral sound that is quite unlike many of his home city’s tropes. Even so, Scott’s tracks are capable of slotting into an assortment of DJ sets. This is attributable to his knowledge of what he does best: his music is spacey, but it always retains functionality. What may sound like a lack of adventurousness from release to release is in fact a refining process, one which has seen remarkably few missteps. Nostalgia, a two-track 12″ for his own Sistrum label, keeps this trend intact.

The title track moves with a prance, coasting on glistening chords and a simple, languid bass groove. Scott infuses the track with filter-degraded darts of synthesizer, which gives its droning, romantic elements a necessary point of contrast. “Sequence Two,” on the flip, is more robust, building on a fizzy bassline and cylindrical snares. The producer injects acidic zaps, stabs of clean keys, and a tightly ribbed synthetic underbelly, and each is defined in its own right as a small part of a machine in motion. At one point Scott strips the track down to practically nothing and then builds it back up one element at a time; the moment he reintroduces the hi-hats is surprisingly gratifying for such a simple maneuver, lending a basic, effective structure to choppy, potentially unwieldy elements. Perhaps according to its title, Nostalgia is not a paradigm-shifter of a release, but it is a fine example of Patrice Scott’s enduring prowess.