Nothing But... Dancefloor Energy, Vol. 17

Eighty-nine beats per minute separate the extremes of this seventeenth volume: ACTYVA's remix of P4sc4l's 'The 5th Season' crawls along at 69 BPM while Noa Estrella's 'Mirame' rockets to 158. In between, most of the record orbits the comfortable 116-134 zone, but the frayed edges are what give it character: 'Kusama' drops to 95 and 'The Serpent's Flow' snakes along at 110 before the floor gets its pulse back.

Two names from the EDM era

The contrast in billing is just as sharp. Bingo Players — the Dutch project Maarten Hoogstraten founded in 2006 with Paul Bäumer and has carried on alone since his partner's death in 2013 — teams up with Kain on 'Give Me Some Time', a compact 126 that stays under three minutes. Hard Rock Sofa, the Russian alias born in Smolensk in 2005 that once released on Axtone and Size, resurfaces with Fomin on 'Afterlight'. Against those two veterans, the rest of the roster is territory to discover, from Prithviraj Bairagi, who opens with 'Rendezvous', to Grupo Bur and their Extremaduran songs.

The remaining contrasts hold the thread:

• The opener is done in 2:03; Luca Ruiz's 'HMWT', the longest cut, stretches its Mainstage build to 6:03 — three times as long.
• Three tracks tagged Mainstage ('CODE RED', 'HMWT', 'One More Time') push raw where the Dance/Pop bulk chases a hook.
• The record speaks two languages: 'Mirame' and 'Si No Te Hubieras Ido' sit alongside seasonal winks like Marcelcius's 'Say Hï Ibiza'.

That the closer is titled 'End Of Beginning' — ACTYVA at the controls again, at 120 BPM in D major — feels deliberate: an ending that reads like a start, on a compilation that lives by pulling the rope from both ends and trusting the middle to hold.