Playlouder - Music is the Network

In two years time the start of the 90s will be 20 years ago, which seems suprising and strangely unsettling. What about the next decade, is it gonna be called the 10s, and in ten years from now are we gonna get Dance Hits of the Noughties compilations featuring Fischer-Spooner and Eric Prydz? The relatively weedy slowness of the beats on this compilation is very different to the harderfasterbiggerstronger staccato pounding of today, where everyone can make a banging dance tune with their home computer and some pirated software and doesn’t have to save up a thousand quid for a sampler and drum machine so that they can nick the chorus from some indie track and string it over some looped baggy beatz thus creating indie-disco history. Even though the latter half of the 90s heralded the Pro-Tools explosion and the ubiquitous slick production that now exudes from the orifices of every major label's pop talent, there’s not much evidence of that here, on a mainstream-oriented compilation that contains everything from piano house to Paul Weller.

Inevitably the bag is a mixed one, largely relying on your particular nostalgic recollections and Pavlovian responses to what floated your drug-addled boat at the time. As the title suggests these are all 12inch mixes, designed to be played by some kind of disc jockey in some kind of club, and are not necessarily the mixes you remember hearing as you got ready to go out after watching TFI Friday. Often this is a bad thing for the home listener, as you get stuff like the Stone Roses’ Fools Gold reduced to the inevitable 5 second bass riff strung out over 5 minutes with a few whooshing noises and no whispering cod-mystical vocals whatsoever. Even worse is the absolutely abysmal remix of the already pretty dodgy student favourite Jump Around that removes the best bit about the song, its ridiculous exploding siren and bouncing “jump jump, everybody jump” beat, and bizarrely replaces it with a limp laid-back groove. This shifts the focus firmly on to the rapping, and as we all know, House of Pain is not Lil Wayne.

Elsewhere, Jus Reach (Easy Nuh Star 12”) by the aptly named Galiano takes you straight back to a dreary Saturday afternoon at a furniture warehouse on a retail park in the mid 90s, all seas of beige leather and depressing mediocrity, while the disappointing Kula Shaker reimagining does that whole indie-remix thing of falling limply between the two genres its trying to straddle and thus disappointing everyone. Its not all bad of course: the Arrested Development track is a genuinely great slice of 90s summertime R&B, Rhythm is a Dancer still has a fantastic synth riff, and the Perfecto mix of U2's Lemon is a trance-tastic example of a rock remix actually working. It doesn’t matter what I say however, as ultimately this compilation has been put together as background listening material for deeply boring people of a certain age who aren’t really into music anymore (though they can’t admit it to themselves) as they have outdoor barbeques. And in that case it is assuredly “fit for purpose”, as they say in the noughties.