★★★★☆
Huxley is hot right now, handling deep and dirty house and garage that hustles to the bounce and grubbiness of bass and offers full phatness where you don’t care how many pounds Michael Dodman’s set will add to your winding waistline. For B-line gluttons, Luke Solomon stumps up a pretty ridiculous one for Iz & Diz, and Nyra’s “Best Of” will get all up under your ribs with a bitchy, pre-millennium garage beast. Suggestive until it’s going at you nose to nose, as if the DJ is giving you the eye all night long before wading through the crowds, Huxley charges from settled beginnings into throwback NYC sounds with Todd Terry and Kenny Dope as inspiration. So upfront that it’s grooving towards the past, so cool that sentences like that don’t have to make sense, its peaks see the mirrors on the glitterball steam up.
Gavin Herlihy’s “Get Loose” and Huxley’s own “Let It Go,” apart from being instructions requiring no second invitation, throw out rapier-like synth segments, symbolizing the mix’s button pushing being alive with vibe. AND.ID weighs in with extra pressure, Baunz adds a sampled monologue to move to that was probably always on the cards, and though the grooves cool at the back end of the mix, Sebo K and Julio Bashmore return to wrenching the thermostat.
File under: Matt Tolfrey, Subb-An, Shenoda