Eleven of the twenty-nine cuts in this funky house selection pulse at exactly 126 BPM. What would read as monotony in another genre is the blueprint here: the whole set orbits a mid-tempo center of gravity, with a 122-124 floor acting as the on-ramp and a 128 ceiling saved for the hot stretch.
The floor is short but useful. Timbee's remix of 'Murder on the Dance Floor' marks the lowest point at 122 and, together with Jonk & Spook's 'Funk In Heaven' and the three pieces at 124 —'We Are Young', 'Mississippi', 'Take My World'—, it maps the natural opening zone: this is where you start a session without burning ammunition. The 125 band, with Peter Brown and the first of Block & Crown's three cuts, links seamlessly into the central block.
That 126 block holds the substance, and also the heaviest name in the batch: Hatiras, the Toronto veteran with two Juno Awards ('Spaced Invader' in 2002, 'Spanish Fly' in 2006), signs 'Fade Into The Morning Light' on Spacedisco Records, the label he runs himself — one that also plants a bullet in the ceiling with Dan Corco's 'Time To Party'. Acetone, meanwhile, spreads five cuts across the climb, three of them pinned to this plateau.
The 128 ceiling gathers six pieces, and it is no accident that the list closes with three of them chained together: 'Professional Window', 'My DJ' and 'Crazy Summertime'. Up in that zone, 'Get On Up' by Moon Boots with Pinto (NYC) stands out: the Brooklyn producer, raised on Anjunadeep between house, soul and disco, brings the musicality peak time usually sacrifices. And to climb that high, 'Till My Feet Got Numb' by The Funk District and Sokur —seven long minutes at 127, the longest cut on the record— is the perfect bridge.
Sequenced like this, from 122 to 128 without a single rough jump, the batch works less like a collection and more like a session already sketched out: all it needs is someone to mix it.
Sources: Wikipedia · Anjunadeep
