★★★★☆
Sixty minutes to get down and boogie, tell others to get out the way, and to hold your head up high and see the light. Gary Beck on his debut mix mans the Soma express, heading into the next double decade with a recap of some of the Glasgow’s label’s ripest.
Easing into the mix with DeepChord’s dub-boiled bubbling, the tide begins to turn when Heiko Laux and Steve Rachmad’s “The Viking” tells you to snap out of whatever dancefloor daydream has come over you. With no time to waste, Beck always giving the turntables a firm push without being overzealous, a Claude Von Stroke mix of Scott Grooves’ “Mothership Connection” applies some staunch tech-house funkiness. Mark Henning gets greater groove going on immediately after, in time for the mix beginning a quick planetary orbit.
Pig&Dan and Mark Reeve restore a supply of techno that goes down a dark alley to fight its own fight. Having hardened the dancefloor and with tribal conditioning still to be inserted, Beck takes it upon himself to open the arena’s roof so radiance comes pouring in with “Algoreal,” without giving up on the stomp he’s paved, furthered by Funk D’void’s “Diabla” flourishing under the tutelage of Christian Smith and Wehbba, and taken to a serene conclusion by Ricardo Villalobos remixing Envoy. A sweepingly concise 21 gun Soma salute.
File under: Alex Under, Matthias Tanzmann, Oliver Deutschmann
