Factory 93 does not hand out slots for filler. When George Smeddles shows up on that imprint with Freeflow, you already know the brief: house that actually moves a floor, not a mood board.
Smeddles is the South London producer and DJ who came through in 2018 with Shake Your Body and then refused to slow down. Start The Party went number one across Beatport genres in 2019. A later collab with Darius Syrossian, Back In The Dance on DFTD, sat at the top of that chart for five weeks. He launched his own label South in 2022, putting out Max Dean, Luke Dean, Prunk and his own cuts. There is also an official remix of Indeep’s Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, fabric, Amnesia, CRSSD, Glastonbury, and a catalogue that keeps landing on Ultra, PIV, Meta, Nature and now Factory 93.
The influences he cites are not a press-release shopping list. Garage, Motown, jazz, house, soul and funk sit in the same room. That mix is why his records still feel like house even when the drums get tighter and the arrangement gets more DJ-minded. Freeflow sits in that lane: tech house, minimal house, and old-school house, tagged exactly that way on the submission. The EP itself is a three-track Factory 93 package running 130–131 BPM, the kind of tempo that works early in a peak set or late when you want the groove to keep talking without screaming.
You do not need a lyric sheet to understand the point. This is functional music built for systems, not for a caption. Rolling drums, a bassline that does not get out of the way, and that slightly swung, slightly dirty UK house feel Smeddles has been refining since he was teaching himself production after years around Ibiza rooms. If you have followed his South output or the IN / ROTATION single Stay, Freeflow will not surprise you with a genre jump. It will surprise you if you still think “minimal” means empty. His version of minimal is usually just everything that does not help the groove getting cut.
That is also why Factory 93 makes sense. The label has become a home for DJs who want records that survive a Saturday night instead of a playlist algorithm. Smeddles already had the résumé. This release is him putting that résumé on a floor that still cares about swing, space and a kick that hits like it means it.
House right now is split between festival-size hooks and the people still obsessed with how a loop breathes for six minutes. Smeddles has always lived closer to the second camp, even when the charts paid attention. Freeflow is another reminder that the old-school part of the tag is not nostalgia. It is the part that keeps the track from sounding dated six months later.
What do you think of this one? Does Freeflow sit with his South material for you, or does the Factory 93 context change how it hits? Drop it in the comments.
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