★★★☆☆
The Souvenir sessions still come across like a deep house movement requiring a secret knock for you to gain entry. Like last year’s first installment, reviewed as “non-descript, with a sunken layer of tics and tricks,” ten tracks from label newcomers trundle away with the same self-effacing, gun barrel-straight, strict machine style, providing pointers for dance floor guidance and leaving the brain and limbs to reach an agreement.
Laila Tov could be draped over a piano as Sierra Sam gets things underway, a relative sweetener to what develops into a selection that’s heavy instead of heavy-going, and a little more progressive in character from the point of the stony CJ Jeff & Thodoris Triantafillou onwards. Emanuel Satie’s “No One Like You” is a chat-up line wrapped in bouncing bass and pretty unromantic application, kind of like saying, “I think you’re hot, here are my terms and conditions” — refer to Volume One again.
Satie comes again and counters with “Moonbounce,” the German getting funkier as he can feel daylight is somewhere close. A partier, kept strictly hush-hush. Not one for being told to keep it down is Kasbah Zoo’s “FAME,” a niggly acid hothead lapping up the darkness with moody sibling “Make Me Dance” following. As po-facedly smart as the first edition, adding a bit of passion to In the City Vol. 2 makes for even greater interest.
File under: Chris Wood, Tapesh &, Maximilijan, Denis Horvat