Three dates hide among these 37 cuts: 1996, 1995 and 2004. In a selection built for crate diggers, the tracks that carry the most weight aren't the freshest ones but the ones that have spent decades proving they work. Those three relics deserve a closer look, because they explain everything around them.
The Kaoz Club Mix of 'Hallelujah' came out in 1996 on King Street Sounds, the same house that has released Dennis Ferrer, Louie Vega and Blaze. Here it runs 7:49 at 124 BPM and is the only cut in G-flat major on the entire list; it still does what Kerri Chandler does better than anyone: turning the club into a church without pushing the tempo a single notch. Three decades of reissues haven't cost it an ounce of relevance.
'Dance, Dance, Dance' reaches back even further. Nick Holder, a veteran of Toronto's house scene and founder of DNH Records, originally released it in 1995: seventies disco sampling over a rolling bassline, mid-nineties house in its purest form. The version chosen here is the Trackheadz 6ix Extended Mix, a recent remix from his own city that stretches the groove to 9:37, the longest cut in the whole selection and one of the few that earns that runtime.
The third piece is 'Stupidisco'. Italian producer Junior Jack built it in 2004 around a vocal hook lifted from The Pointer Sisters' 'Dare Me' (1985), and its disco-rooted filter house has aged so well it keeps collecting remixes, from Lee Cabrera to David Penn. It appears here in its original form: 5:07 at 125 BPM that still smell like summer.
Around these three touchstones orbit 34 current productions —Hot Since 82, Emanuel Satie, Kolter, Harry Romero twice over— and the bar is plain to see: every new cut has to hold its own next to material proven over decades. Not all of them survive that comparison equally well, and that filter is exactly what you ask of a good crate digger.
Sources: Bandcamp · Definitive Recordings · Discogs · Data Transmission
