Cut Copy Fabriclive 29

The Fabric and Fabriclive compilations have recently been a good forum for top tier electronic acts to share their love with fans and newcomers. Mixes are difficult to review, unless something offensively horrible turns up with no context to justify it (that makes them worse). Reviews from electronic sites and publications are helpful for instruction as to what one should like and already know, but aren't useful to the layman such as myself, who enjoys and admires dance music without having the frame of reference to hold his own in the obsessively detailed culture(s). When removed from the worry of what has already been selected and blasted, one has only the music to go by.

Cut Copy's Fabriclive 29, released last year, has proven dependable in my record store and on my laptop. It serves as a potent swagger booster, sort of an ideal hour to hear at a club focusing on this decade's collisions between dance and rock if the DJs are determined, as an exercise, not to play the Rapture. The DFA are represented (as they very well must be, for spearheading this whole disco/punk brouhaha) in a suitably chimey and immaculate remix of Cut Copy's own Slide In. Recognizable artists such as Soulwax (a Tiga mix of the deliciously sinister and propulsive E Talking), the Faint, Justice, and Daft Punk (Face to Face with Todd Edwards, a favourite from the great, very disco Discovery album) appear and justify their fame. Danceable rock gems by Roxy Music and Ciccone Youth (Sonic Youth and Mike Watt) are snuck in and propped up by beats. This is a populist dance mix, unafraid of the spectre of familiarity, but the less famous do not suffer. The four tracks of their own Cut Copy chose to include are sublime. Cuts by artists like Severed Heads, Who Made Who, Munk and others are often as distinctive as those of their more exposed peers.

All of this straddles and through the format of a mix makes non-existent the line between danceable rock and electronic music for headbangers and fistshakers. It is significant that the first notes that captivate are from a guitar. Joakim's opening track, Wish You Were Gone, is an anthemic party starter, a positive primer for jumpnshouting, but with a wiry emotional punch. The first half of the mix uses others' tracks to elevate, electrify, and build up this simmering vibe, with tons of snotty rock vocals emerging. As dance parties must, the second half points more to four on the floor beat oblivion, working it to a boil before being eased down by the beauty of Cut Copy's creepy final tracks.