2016 has been a relatively quiet year for the self-appointed guardian of French Touch, Lifelike. In fact, I think this year we’ve only blogged one of his tracks, his excellent club-ready remix of Happy Monday’s ‘Hallujah’. Well, his quiet patch ends today in suitably epic fashion, as we’ve got a tasty preview of his latest release: LifeLike Presents: French House Mafia ‘Le Disco Chic’

Last year, LifeLike returned with the fiery ‘Overdrive’, which we premiered the rather excellent Alan Braxe remix of (if you’ve not heard it before you must go and rectify this monumental mistake now). Listened to it? Good. Let’s carry on.

Split across two tracks, the mercurial Frenchman’s latest release sounds like it was recorded in the late 90s in a smokey Parisian basement. Part 1 is one part bumpin’ French house and one part chintzy, soulful disco and sees Laurent Ash dispatching a throwback French touch record that brings back the halcyon days of Falke, Braxe and Bangalter.

Part 2 of this particular suave-sounding French house odyssey is equally brilliant as plump, bumpin’ basslines set the tone, as Lifelike begins to build layers of chatty cowbells over a soulful vocal that are then looped into a French touch frenzy, before it settles back into its effortlessly cool groove for 7 minutes of bliss.

When Lifelike is on this sort of form he’s in a class of his own.

As well as a new release, Lifelike has a new mobile app out that you can download for both Android and iOS which he is promising a wealth of exclusive content for, and it costs less than the price of a cup of coffee. You can download it here.

Lifelike Presents: French House Mafia ‘Le Disco Chic’ is out December 9 via Computer Science.