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Various Artists
TWILIGHT TRAX
(Trax)
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The Trax label continues to reissue works from its years as a Chicago house-music pioneer. The Trax sound was atmospheric in texture, tipsy in tone, a music with one ear in dreamland and the other on the dance floor, getting way way down. The 16 tracks included in this set carry that standard to extremes, with slow tempos and understated melodicism that render the music more drowsy than tipsy and hardly at all sexual. The chief exception is Mr. Fingers featuring Robert Owens’s "Can You Feel it" — Owens, who was house music’s greatest male vocalist ever, always sounds sexual even when drowsy. (Think Otis Redding doing "Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa.") And Deeper Society’s "Gotta Get Up," with its modest sense of stride (very like that of David Guetta’s 2004 club hit "Just a Little More Love"), also rouses the spirit. Elsewhere, the mood feels muffled, from the saxophonic caresses and vocal echo effects of Screamin’ Rachael’s "Just Want To Make Love" (a house-music pioneer, she now co-owns the Trax label) to Master C & J’s sweetly boyish "It Will Make You Happy." The latter is the one track that recalls the randy, surreal sexuality of Trax’s Frankie Knuckles and Jaime Principle productions from the late 1980s.
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