20 Fingers

January 25 - February 1, 1 9 9 6

***1/2 Various Artists

20 FINGERS

(ZOO/BMG)

The "20 fingers" featured in this compilation belong to Manny Mohr and Charlie Babie, a Miami-based production team responsible for the year's most successful pop-disco hits. Like the rest of Miami's freestyle music, the Babie/Mohr 20 Fingers productions feel giddy, like beach fun, as they apply a severely minimalist approach to instrumentation and melody. Their singers sound tiny and soft, as if they were trying to get a role in Disney's Toy Story; the beats of 20 Fingers' songs move as if on tiptoe. But Mohr and Babie apply their formula to all kinds of acts without compromising the playful lightness that makes freestyle so breezy -- from Gillette's badmouthing, homegirlish "Mr. Personality" and "Short Dick Man" to the dancehall of Max-a-Million's "Fatboy" and "Take Your Time." 20 Fingers convinces dancers that here's a world where all is vacation sunshine and sexy good fun, no matter what kind of weather happens to be ravaging other climes.

-- Michael Freedberg