" Not everyone understands house music. It’s a spiritual thing. A body thing. A soul thing. " So sang DJ Eddie Amador in " House Music, " a huge 1999 hit and one of house’s defining tracks. True enough. House music is rarely heard on commercial radio. Very few house-music labels are connected to an industry giant. And the few artists who have had big hits with house (LaBouche with " Sweet Dreams, " CeCe Peniston with " Finally, " Robin S with " Show Me " ) have moved away from the genre as quickly as you can say, " How do I go pop? "

Yet house keeps on thriving, feeding on its own inner resources. Club DJs, along with the producers of the idiosyncratic, tiny-label 12-inch singles they use, take the credit here. Witness DJ Erick Morillo’s Subliminal Sessions (Subliminal) and DJ Escape’s Ultimate Afterhours Vol. 1 (Groovalicious/Strictly Rhythm). Morillo’s new two-CD set plays two different styles of house — classic " garage " and funky electronica — with sweetness and grace. Escape’s 12-track debut is simply the most exquisite Eurobeat session ever recorded in the US. Morillo’s soft-kiss rhythms and reaching-out vocals bring to mind the work of David Morales; Escape’s pretty tones and fast spacy tempos conjure Italian and Ibiza dance music.

The first of the Morillo discs goes back to the soul-music dance beats that ruled disco in its heyday. Kid Crème’s " Now You, " Harry Romero’s " Night & the Black, " Rivera and Alvarez’s " Forever, " and New Yorker Soul’s " Do What You Want To Do " — these last two cuts sung with sass by Shawnee Taylor — express all that made disco so hopefully sensuous: the sweetness of readying one’s lip for a kiss; the freedom to do what one likes; the joy of moving every curve of one’s body; the exultation of simply crying out, " Music! Music! Music! " Morillo’s mixes are full of velvety, light percussions, dainty beats, echo effects, and highly scented melodies. Funky at times, laden with short pinchy hooks, always lithe and slippery, his instrumental creations carry dancers along and forward so smoothly they hardly notice their own exertion.

Morillo, like Morales, mixes without stress or clash: one voice, one rhythm, one orchestral flurry jumps directly to another. Expressions may change, but not the movement. The dancer cannot opt out: nowhere in Morillo’s is there an exit point. Some DJs rely too heavily on this gimmick and leave the music itself sounding narrow or flat. Not Morillo. His voices, beats, and effects constantly change shape and emphasis, drawing the dancers’ attention away from the control that his smooth-mix style maintains over them.

Control even gets its own song here: on Technasia’s " Force, " one of those tipsy, pretty-boy crooner types emblematic of house delights in surrendering his heart to the rhythm. And Subliminal Sessions’ second CD has another even more pointed vocal of this type as its opener: Sono’s " Keep Control, " a take-me, hug-me deep-house song sung by L.A. Salomon. (That track also turns up on DJ Escape’s CD — as its opener.)

Escape’s aptly named disc presents a set as single-minded as Morillo’s is complex. Ultimate Afterhours Vol. 1 leaves behind the funk and syncopation that mirror the grit and struggle of city life. Instead, it’s all sunshine and love affairs, some of them fast (So Real’s " You Take My Breath Away " ), some of them motionless (Aubrey’s " Stand Still " ). Some of them soar (Svensen & Gielen’s " The Beauty of Silence " ); some of them swoop downward (Aurora featuring Naimee Coleman’s " Ordinary World " ). Many are concupiscent: " DJ Prince & Justin K’s " Got To Have " and Frahma featuring Maria Rubia’s " Every Time You Need Me. " The very-distant-lover theme of classic space disco also appears in Airheadz’ " Stanley (Here I Am). "

But whatever Escape’s direction, his singers remain irreducibly girlish, and his rhythms always flutter at warp speed. It may be hard to imagine that the same kids who cringe to Professional Murder Music, ponder profoundly for Days of the New, spit at Godsmack, or bubble for Kittie might turn around and dance to Escape’s girlish angel songs, never mind pump iron to Morillo’s. Yet at the dozens of big-name house-music DJ nights I’ve attended at Avalon, it’s those kids who come to dance. Evidently the same people who shut in their emotions when they listen to the dense, narrowcasted music that rules rock radio today also open up to hug and be hugged, to touch and be touched, to let the music control them and to adore being controlled. In other words, we have met the audience for house music, and it is us.