Miguel Campbell - Baby I Got It

1. Baby I Got It
2. Something Special
3. Baby I Got It (Richy Ahmed Remix)

House hero Miguel Campbell releases his debut single on the ever-consistent Hot Creations imprint. ‘Baby I Got it’ - a mouth-watering mix of sexy disco-tinged house cuts with a dose of murky business from Richie Ahmed in the remix.

Kicking off the EP, title track ‘Baby I Got It’ is a teasing disco-house workout full of funky bass, and shimmering, cosmic streaks. Miguel’s retro bounce, richly weaved instrumentals and down-low B-line make ‘Baby I Got It’ a compelling introduction to Miguel’s future facing disco strut. Next up, ‘Something Special’ flaunts a sultry R&B vocal infused with a garagey house vibe. Set against a glitterball backdrop, the velvet ripple of “Something special sexy wonderful” coursing through the tide of funk-laden disco grooves just oozes soul and sex appeal. On remix duty, Richy Ahmed brings a dark and dirty edge to ‘Baby I Got It’. Driven by a chugging, druggy groove and warped distorted melody, this is moody tech-house built for after hours...www.piccadillyrecords.com

Edit Murphy - The Motown Edits Vol. I EP

01. Mercy
02. It's Gonna Be
03. Morning Light

‘Edit Murphy‘ is a seriously cool name and with a name like that, you’ll need to back it up with some good tunage. Luckily, this guy does with his edits of classic Motown tunes.

Edits are not always going to be everybodies cup of tea. However, he has done a great job on these classic tracks. Check his work on Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy Me” it makes for some pretty fun and quite hypnotic disco action...www.toomanysebastians.net

Ghost Note - Ghost Note II

1. Kapwa
2. Albularyo

Another red hot and innovative release from our favourite NY label! Ghost Note II follow up their stunning debut with another double header of uncategorizable, but mind-blowing cosmic dance music. Wikipedia say that 'ghost notes' are 'musical notes occurring in a rhythmic figure which are purposely deemphasized, often to the point of near silence'. I reckon that's what is going on with the tripped-out epic "Kapwa"; opening with radio static, the track slowly builds with percussive layers and a malevolent, out-of-earshot tribal intensity before opening out into the beautiful sunlight of 60s-style psych church organ and acoustic guitar lines... Blimey! It should leave you gagging for a bit of dancefloor action, which is handily supplied on B-side cosmic belter "Abularyo", which adds a cinematic edge to proceedings and lets go full-tilt (cosmic) boogie style in the middle - you can almost hear the flap of those flares...www.piccadillyrecords.com

Weekend Express - Going 2 Chicago

01. Going To Chicago
02. Somethin's Up
03. After Party

Still Music has commanded worthy attention after Rick Wilhite's Analogue Aquarium. Its smaller sublabel, Stillove4music, has no definitive musical mandate, but "excellent releases" are as good a genre as any. And that's exactly what Weekend Express provide on this excursion into various types of Chicago house.

It's easy to figure that out by the title track, which makes use of a vocal sample that chants the mantra "Goin' 2 Chicago" over a stabbing synth line and echoed claps. "Something's Up" makes use of soul vocal elements—a nice contrast to its more repetitive a-side sibling and though the four-to-the-floor never falters, a flowing, funk breakdown towards the end is expertly pulled back together. The last leg of the journey is a slow, powerful deep house track—a nod towards Mr. Finger's Juno 60. The EP is a very polished production and, if anything, this may be its greatest flaw. Any rawer, however, and Weekend Express may have strayed into murky nostalgia...www.residentadvisor.net

Argy – Reminiscence EP

01. Wish You Were Here (Vocal Mix)
02. Wish You Were Here (Dub Mix)
03. N.A.O.E. (Argy’s Hacienda Mix)
04. Tari Tari
05. Ein Lied Für Popol Vuh (Bostro Pesopeo Remix)

This is Argy's first outing on Permanent Vacation, but it fits neatly into their emotive and objective take on retro. The Hacienda reference of the remix is a pointer to where he's aiming. "Wish You Were Here" is sweet, deep piano house with a sprinkle of acid, and with a circling string line straight out of Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches. Removing the whisper of the title words in the dub version increases the feeling of absence, and the track's depth. "Tari Tari" has a funky bassline and drums opposed by melancholy, warm and glittering melodies, and the grandiose Hacienda mix is "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" extrapolated to 1990. Argy's ability to spice up tracks with obscure musical strokes lends itself well to all of them, and the baby blue quirkiness of Pesopeo's mix is sublime too. The reason it doesn't fit with the rest on vinyl is because it lacks the same kind of timestamp—not the quality...www.residentadvisor.net

Tensnake - Something About You

01. Something About You
02. Something About You (Jas Shaw Alt Mix)
03. You Know I Know It

"Coma Cat" was released two Januarys ago, in the dead of winter, when people needed a pick-me-up. It delivered in spades—and kept doing so right up to the end of the year, when it was at or near the top of endless dance publications' 2010 lists (RA placed it second). Its vibe was pretty retro, but not tied to a single period: the big piano chords, bounding bassline and stuttering stab-pattern vocals would have fit anywhere from mid-'80s NYC to acid-house London to mid-'90s Chicago and, obviously, beyond.

"Something About You," on the other hand, is more specifically reminiscent of the post-acid-house explosion—gauzy and E'd up, beholden to the idea of house as a post-sampling environmental groove rather than simply a set of rules to follow. The murmured title phrase and Hoover-noisy stab pattern play off each other like twin poles of what people used to mean by "house is a feeling," only here it doesn't seem like dogma. Jas Shaw's remix, meanwhile, slooooows it down a bunch, a la Belgian new beat, from the same period as the original recalls. It charmingly steps over the line between timeless and time-bound, even if its use value is pretty limited...www.residentadvisor.net

Sidwho? - I Do The Night

A1 I Do The Night
B1 I Do The Night (Session Victim Dub)

Adelaide-based producer Sidwho?'s second Future Classic 12-inch of 2010, "I Do Night," might, at first, appear to rank as his most subdued number yet, but thanks to some nifty drum programming it ends up as a snappy piece of indie disco. The low 120s are where the multi-instrumentalist has drawn the most acclaim—his 2009 "Vote Bowie for President" was picked up by a slew of slo-mo house and disco DJs—and continues to excel. This time around, the analogue haze that has characterised much of Sidwho?'s solo productions doesn't stick around for too long, resulting in a more refined and cleaner sound. As a result, the jilted percussive-focus of this A-side lends itself to a slightly more robust time slot than your usual Sidwho? fare.

On the flip, Session Victim have been enlisted to provide a dub. The result is a pleasant house excursion, where the pair introduce an intermittent midrange filter while drawing out the original's vocals. The morphing bassline and delicate synth melody combine well, but it doesn't quite match the workability of Sidwho?'s crisp drums and dramatic keys...www.residentadvisor.com

Nebraska - Four For Four EP

1 This Is The Way
2 Bar Story
3 Ras El Hanout
4 Arrondissement

Four brand new tracks of filtered, disco-infected and funked up deep house music from Nebraska. 'this Is the Way' starts the jam with heady, filtered disco loops, while 'Bar Story' finds a heavier bass-driven groove with a sublimely tempered euphoria. 'Ras El Hanout' is an infectious display of edit mastery, guaranteed to please lovers of Trus'me or even Soundhack, and he tips out on the shimmering late night aura of 'Arrondissement'. Another crowd pleaser from Rush Hour, fans of Rick Wilhite, Trus'me, or Shake should check this!...www.boomkat.com

Toby Tobias - The Try

01 The Try (original - Miss Bee vocals)
02 The Try (The Off Key Hat remix)
03 Highway 24
04 Highway 1

Beautiful elegic mid-tempo boogie tune by Toby Tobias similar in the style to his excellent ''this feeling'' release on Rekids. Comes with a loose funky take from hyped Off Key Hat ( Dissident, Untracked ). flip over for more peak time action: ''highway 25'' is a bubbly, synth heavy modern disco tune while ''highway 1'' takes it in a more oldschool acid-house direction...www.clone.nl

Todd Terje - Remaster of the Universe

CD1 (unmixed)
01. Reverso 68 - Piece Together (Todd Terje Remix #2)
02. M - Pop Muzik (Todd Terje Remix)
03. Chuck Norris - All That She Wants
04. Simon Baker - Plastik (Todd Terje Turkatech Remix)
05. Chaz Jankel - Glad To Know You (Todd Terje Edit)
06. Duliatten Disco Dandia - Surat Surfin
07. Jose Gonzalez - Killing For Love (Todd Terje Acoustic Remix)
08. Felix Laband - Whistling in Tongues (Todd Terje Remix #2)
09. Percussion Break / Shit Robot - Simple Things (Work It Out)(Todd Terje Remix #2)
10. Mungolian Jetset - Moon Jocks n Prog Rocks (Todd Terje's Schlong Tong Vocal Version)
11. Fox N'Wolf - Claws Against Knives (Todd Terje Night Version)
12. Dolle Jolle- Balearic Incarnation (Todd Terje Variation)
13. Gichy Dan - On A Day Like This (Todd Terje Edit)
14. Rogue Cat - Magic Journey (Todd Terje Remix #2)
15. Kacic Kullmann's Five - Terjelator
16. New Mjondalen Disco Swingers - Eurodans

CD2 (mixed)
01. Antena - Camino Del Sol (Todd Terje Remix)
02. Jose Gonzalez - Killing For Love (Todd Terje Brokeback Mix)
03. Dolle Jolle - Balearic Incarnation (Todd Terje's Extra Dolle Mix)
04. M - Pop Muzik (Todd Terje Remix)
05. Lindstrom - Another Station (Todd Terje Remix)
06. Studio - Life's a Beach! (Todd Terje Beach House Mix)
07. Shit Robot - Simple Things (Todd Terje Version)
08. Mungolian Jetset - Moon Jocks n Prog Rocks (Todd Terje's Even Stiv-En Dub Version)
09. Rogue Cat - Magic Journey (Todd Terje Remix)

The remix is by no means a particularly modern phenomenon. In fact its roots can be traced all the way back to the Baroque era in which the great J.S. Bach offered listeners arguably the most bumper remix package of all time with his Goldberg Variations—30 different mash-ups of a repeated 16-bar chord progression. One shudders to think of the pressing costs had Bach been around during the vinyl heyday when disco pioneers Tom Moulton and Walter Gibbons were busy cutting tape and looping beats in order to create the "dance remix" as we know it today. Those early efforts of the late 1970s were intended simply as a way of extending popular tracks by honing in on more hypnotic rhythm sections (or "the breakdown," as that practice would eventually become known) to feed the insatiably heady appetite of New York's burgeoning club scene. In the 30 years that have followed, the discipline of the remix has evolved into a broad school where artists are invited freely to reinterpret the work of others, often laying the cornerstone of a record's success; and in 2010, if ever there were a pretender to the throne of Remaster of the Universe, Todd Terje would most certainly stake a claim.

Alongside compatriots Prins Thomas and Hans-Peter Lindstrom, he has spearheaded the Norwegian-nuanced disco sound (dub-pop, nu-Balearic, cosmic-Kraut—whatever you want to call it) that proved so popular towards the end of the last decade; yet the versatility and repeated success of his remix output alone evince that, as the brouhaha surrounding that particular scene begins to wane, Todd Terje looks set to maintain his ubiquity. Though if the press-release is to be believed, it won't be as a remixer: this compilation-cum-retrospective of his work, released by Permanent Vacation (who else?), supposedly marks "the end of the easy days of remixing, now Terje is gonna heal the world with proper self-composed music!"

If healing the world is indeed Terje's raison d'etre, he has certainly been making a fairly decent stab at it so far, as illustrated by the impressive CV that forms the basis of this two-disc compilation. Remixes for Jose Gonzalez, Antena and the now almost-canonical rework of Dolle Jolle's "Balearic Incarnation" have provided some of dance music's most blissed-out, loved-up moments in recent years, and are frankly so well known by now that any further discussion of their musical merit here seems like a waste of time. It's space, it's beach, it's cosmic, man. But moreover, it's good.

Resisting the temptation to rest entirely on his laurels, Terje manages to pack enough unheard curios into disc one's continuous mix to keep interest levels sufficiently buoyed. A cheeky cover of Ace of Base's trashy classic "All That She Wants" and a barbershop/swing-band version of his own anthem "Eurodans" are cute additions to a set which offers several alternative reworkings of the remixes we all know and love. This fondness for tailoring tracks not necessarily for release, but rather for playing purposes is a signature of the Norwegian's—his Tangoterje re-edits of acts as diverse as Wham! Chris Rea and Guns 'n' Roses, for instance, have earned him enviable notoriety—and this mix provides a decent account of Todd Terje, the DJ.

The nine stand-alone tracks, however, featured on disc two are arguably his finest efforts: the aforementioned "Balearic Incarnation," last year's crack shot at Shit Robot's "Simple Things" and his seemingly evergreen, pumped-up version of Lindstrom's "Another Station" are undoubtedly the highlights. An unreleased rework of a forthcoming Mungolian Jet Set track also keeps the carrot dangled in typically madcap fashion and shows why many an artist will be sad to learn that Terje has, at least for now, decided to hang up his remix boots.

Much as the suggestibly fickle and rapidly transient taste of the dance music world is to be decried, one cannot help but feel that the space-cadet sound from the North is past its peak and as such this compilation can at times feel like treading already well-trodden ground. Though these feelings can be readily countered with the assured knowledge that, of everything the Balearic breeze washed up on our shores over the last few years, Todd Terje's oeuvre is among (if not) the very best, and I can take as much pleasure counting this record as part of my collection as I can looking forward to the fulfilment of that press-release promise...www.residentadvisor.net

Sandy Rivera - House Master No. 4

Cd1
01.Kings Of Tomorrow - Finally
02.Sandy Rivera & John Alverez Ft. Shawnee Taylor - Forever
03.Kings Of Tomorrow - My Love Is Real
04.Sandy Rivera - I Cant Stop
05.Soul Vision Ft Dihanne Moore - Dont Hold Back
06.Kings Of Tomorrow - Tear It Up
07.Aurei - Life
08.Sandy Rivera & Jose Burgos - Papi
09.Sandy Rivera & Jose Burgos - The Path
10.Sandy Rivera & Jose Burgos - Living Me

Cd2
01.Sandy Rivera Ft Lt Brown - Come Into My Room (Take It Back Mix)
02.Jamie Lewis Ft Micheal Watford - For You (Moodbangers Mix)
03.Soul Vision - Dont Stop
04.Soul Vision Ft D'layna - You've Been On My Mind
05.Kings Of Tomorrow Ft Dawn Tallman - Let It Go
06.Sandy Rivera - Changes
07.Kings Of Tomorrow - Another Day
08.Kings Of Tomorrow Ft Rae - Can't Stop
09.Sandy Rivera - Trouble
10.Kings Of Tomorrow - Minimized

Whether recording under his real name or his arguably more recognisable Kings of Tomorrow moniker, Sandy Rivera is a legend both in the studio and behind the decks. Without question his most triumphant moment is the seminal anthem ‘Finally’, which has been cited by many of his peers as the greatest House record of all time, but his career is by no means limited to this creative pinnacle. He has a gift for pairing slick production with evocative vocals; the results of which are at times nothing short of stunning.

Sandy has delivered some of the very greatest dancefloor tracks of the modern age, and will continue to do so long after others have passed at the wayside. A true House master.

His House Masters compilation is the first time 22 of Sandy’s finest productions and remixes – all full length & unmixed – are available in one place. Under his Kings of Tomorrow, Soul Vision and of course his own name this is the definitive Sandy collection; a definitive look at one of the in-demand names in house music today...www.defected.com

The Juan Maclean - The Future Will Come

01. The Simple Life 

02. The Future Will Come 

03. One Day 

04. A New Bot 

05. Tonight 

06. No Time 

07. Accusations 

08. The Station 

09. Human Disaster 

10. Happy House

Four years after dropping the synth-drenched opus Less Than Human, the Juan Maclean are finally ready for its follow-up. Come April 14, the project run by former Six Finger Satellite front-man John MacLean will release the long-awaited The Future Will Come LP courtesy of DFA. And according to the beatmaker, fans should expect a change. Described as being more vocal and pop, the Juan Maclean’s sophomore effort finds the project going back to the '80s this time out and, in fact, entering some very Human League territory, MacLean says in the press release. “In my career as the Juan Maclean, my guiding principle was to start out more dance-y and instrumental, and someday bow out making flat-out, three-and-a-half-minute pop songs,” he explains. “I wanted to do an album with male-female interplay in the vocals,” adding that this has led him to add LCD Soundsystem’s Nancy Whang as a full-fledged band member, as well as listen to a whole lot of Dare-era Human League in the lead-up to the record. Also helping out on The Future Will Come are Nick Millhiser and Alex Frankel of NY disco duo Holy Ghost! and !!! drummer Jerry Fuchs, all whom were recently part of the Juan MacLean’s full-band live tour and helped debut much of this new material last year.

Ka So Re - Petite

1		Petite
2		Shoes
3		Standing Still
4		Dramatically Keep You
5		One Horse Down
6		Petite (Obi Blanche Remix)
7		Shoes (Eero Johannes Remix)