Murk
In 1992 Miami's Murk records blew up. Everywhere you went all manner of DJs were playing their records. At Techno club Pure I remember Derrick May caning Interceptor's "Together". House DJs like MAW and Junior Vasquez, catering for a scene just warming up to soft lushly emollient textures (Deep Dish and Wamdue were just around the corner), flipped over their belting-raw analogue b-lines and brittle punchy drums. Allegedly the Progressive House scene also embraced the records. Not only were their tracks rough, they managed to pull off the difficult feat of simultaneously sounding expensive. Murk was the aural equivalent of a Hummer.
The voices on Coral Way Chiefs "Release Myself", Funky Green Dogs from Outer Space's "High Up" and Intruder's "U Got Me" weren't those of saccharine divas or weedy geezers. Anonymously tagged as George Pugh or Mark M, but more often than not not even listed on the label, these were vocals in the grand tradition of disco. Closest in quality to those of the Loretta Holloways and Darryl Pandys of this world, the kind that people unfavorably compare with the beyatch Madonna*, these were voices with grain: worldly, sleazy and wide-girthed. Paired with Ralph Falcon and Oscar Gaetan's superbly hooky bass-lines and their quirky taste for samples (the 40-foot tall Manu Dibango on "Some Lovin" the ESG "Moody" riff on "Reach For Me") and the results were gigantic.
Murk busting out of Miami was the key to their misfit status within Dance Music. Apparently the duo fell back on their imaginations when it came to making House music, they'd never visited the Warehouse of The Paradise Garage. Succeeding in much in the way that Southern Hip-Hop did early this decade by sounding fresh by merit of getting it slightly wrong. House wasn't supposed to be this raw.
*who ironically they ended up remixing upon personal request...