“House music has always been New York, Chicago, and Detroit, maybe as far as D.C. and Philadelphia,” Atlanta producer Kai Alcé told Red Bull Music Academy in 2016. “Under what we could call the Mason-Dixon line, house music hasn’t had that history.” Alcé, who was born in New York and raised in Detroit, has helped foster a house community in Atlanta since he moved there in the early 90s. In 2005 he cofounded the annual outdoor party House in the Park, which now draws between 10,000 and 20,000 attendees. And a few years later Alcé launched NDATL Muzik, a label named after the three house hubs he’s resided in. Last year the label dropped his latest EP, Back in This Shit, which opens with “Sheed’s Move,” a lovely downtempo house cut on which Rasheeda Ali provides wafting flute notes. Tonight Alcé headlines Smart Bar to celebrate NDATL’s tenth anniversary. v
