Can You Feel It

CTL-E-5258 · Work · song · 1986

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

“Can You Feel It” is a 1986 Chicago house track by Mr. Fingers — the recording alias of Chicago producer Larry Heard — and one of the foundational records of deep house. Heard, a former drummer, built the track with a Roland synthesizer and a TR-909 drum machine, layering parts between two cassette decks in single passes. Trax Records released it as an instrumental on the Washing Machine EP in 1986, and it later appeared on the 1988 Fingers Inc. album Another Side. An unauthorized later version layered Chuck Roberts' spoken “My House” sermon over the instrumental; it became the version many dancers know best, and Heard has publicly disavowed it. The record's impact on deep house is routinely compared to the impact of Derrick May's “Strings of Life” on Detroit techno.

The record

• Also known as: Can U Feel It

Notes

Staged 2026-10-15 under CTL-GOV-006 (Next Slate C); Gate A clear; Gate B met (2 independent sources). CTL treatment: subject of CTL house/technology research brief CTL-RB-TECH-000001; named in 17 distinct CTL corpus files (36 mentions) per the 2026-10-15 corpus gap scan. Statistic carried: ranked No. 51 in Slant Magazine's “100 Greatest Dance Songs” (2006), as recorded in the Wikipedia article (checked 2026-10-15). RED-TEAM FLAG carried forward: CTL brief CTL-RB-TECH-000001 attributes the lead synthesizer to a Roland Jupiter-6 (per Heard), while Insomniac's production history credits a Juno-60 for bass and melody — the abstract therefore names no model, and the variance is queued for reconciliation against the brief before merge. Photo slot: HELD — see packet §Photo Slots.

Relationships

• Larry Heard — authored by
  Larry Heard is the track's songwriter and producer; it was released under his Mr. Fingers alias — and “Mr. Fingers” is a registered alias of the existing Larry Heard record (CTL-E-0049) — on the Washing Machine EP (Trax Records, 1986).

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Can You Feel It (Larry Heard song)” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_You_Feel_It_(Larry_Heard_song) (primary source)
• Insomniac, “From the Crate: Mr. Fingers ‘Can You Feel It’” — https://www.insomniac.com/music/from-the-crate-mr-fingers-can-you-feel-it/

Record CTL-E-5258 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 2 sources (1 primary) · 1 mapped relationship · CTL research: PPL-001.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

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