**** Various Artists

HIT MIX 96 VOLUME TWO

(Cold Front)

The theme, as in so much of the best disco, is self-celebration, and because it's hard to beat Joi Cardwell's "Trouble," Daphne's "I Found It," and (best cut of all) Barbara Tucker's "I Get Lifted" as assertions of personal pride, the 11-track compilation succeeds. Whoever selected the tracks had the courage (despite the CD's title) to move past just the hits. How many compilers would think of Clubzone's frenzied "Hands Up"? Or Blondie's Eurodisco-ish "Atomic"? The DJ's solid style of remixing (uncredited in the CD's liner notes) also helps; he keeps the music's pressure climbing and gives it substance as the program moves from diva performances to acid and techno abstractions like Keoki's "Caterpillar" and Plant Soul's "Feel the Music." But abstraction quickly gives way, in this glamor-minded set, to songs like Technotronic's "Move It to the Rhythm" and Fun Factory's "Close to You," where the rhythm stretches forever, the beat hits the ceiling, and voices lift off into the mystic, the almighty zone of everything giddy.

-- Michael Freedberg