★★★★☆
Perhaps more housey than you’d expect — less about barking orders to face the front with shoulders back — Colin McBean’s archiving has got more pumps than a fiend for flat tires. Connected to techno by the applied DNA of flailing hi-hats (the ones that aren’t clipped but shake all over the place on the drum it), and sporadic doubling up on drum thickness, a funky double disc onslaught loops until hip fractures and busted tailbones have ERs heaving.
Extensive experience shows that one good lick grunting and shunting over and over (the taut temptation of “I’m Dirty”) can be all you need to hit lotto. “Hear Me Out” and “Jet Black” require only dour bass notes to round up a dance floor, though disc two shows signs of swivelling into the floor and unable to free itself from its own locked groove. This is less a problem for “Lights” and “The Day After B”, turning disco filtered love trains into high speed rail links, and gentle giant “My Father’s Farda.”
‘Proper’ techno murk comes from swirling boiler “Pepsi”, with subliminal advertising possibly at work to gauge the tastes of a new generation; and “Danger” boxing you until birds are spinning around your dome. Vocal samples verge on the unusual: “Did You Know” will play on your nerves, Jodeci ooze over the unreleased pleasure/pain experience “Shelter”, and the message on “Going Home” seems a bit wasted on an otherwise fine ambient cascade helping treat summer stereos and poolside walkmans.
File under: The Advent, Carl Cox, Tommy Atkins
