Future Disco? Well, no, this is really more like Recent Past Disco. Production team Hott 22 has been responsible for some of the most popular house music of the past ten years, and this two-disc set brings together ten of their own releases along with 13 other singles by various artists from the Gossip Records stable, in a continuous mix. That adds up to an awful lot of house music to listen to in one sitting, but then, sitting isn't really the point -- this is functional music, not listening music. That said, if you'd rather chill than shake your groove thang, you'll find a number of tracks on this program that do reward that kind of attention: Hott 22's "Just Friends" (featuring the fine vocalist Angie Zee) is an actual song and a very good one;
Pure Dynamite and
Live Element collaborate on a nice rap/R&B number titled "Downtime," featured here in a remix by
Stonebridge; Hott 22's "Before I Let You In" is charmingly coy and subtly sexy. This being a house compilation, there are the inevitable dry stretches of brain-dead thumpa-thumpa -- here provided by
Richard Grey and, in several cases, by Hott 22 themselves, who are not above phoning it in on occasion. But overall this is a perfectly serviceable collection. ~ Rick Anderson