Thirteen cuts and a remarkably narrow band: ten of them live between 120 and 125 BPM. A quick glance says plateau, but the real architecture of this festival-minded nu disco selection lies in the two cracks that open inside it: the drop to 115 on 'D.J.'s Delight' (Tim Tucker and Kuato for Star Creature Universal Vibrations) and, on the home stretch, the 108 of Gabriele Poso's 'Maraviglia', the shortest and slowest cut of the batch. They work as pressure valves — without them, an hour-plus of groove hovering around 123 would flatten out.
The opening plays high from the first minute: Alot's 'Que Queres' on Toy Tonics sets 124, and TEED immediately dials down to 120 with the DJ-Kicks version of 'Never Seen You Dance', the club rework Orlando Higginbottom built for his entry in the !K7 series, revisiting one of his own 2022 tracks. That 124-120-122-125 seesaw across the first four cuts already signals that energy here does not climb in a ramp — it oscillates.
The 125 ceiling shows up twice, with opposite jobs. Dr Packer and [love] tattoo spend it early on 'the bass has got me movin'', nearly seven minutes of muscle, while 'Everything Starts ?' by Jerk Boy and The Coney Island Rhythm Band saves it to close in A Major, ending open and on a high. Between them, tracks seven through ten form the stable core: four cuts locked at 123-124, crowned by 'Tango Hustle' in Dave Lee's Latican Hustle for Z Records, the house and disco label Lee — formerly Joey Negro — founded in 1990. At 7:11 it is the longest cut here, and that is its natural role: a sustained peak right before the breather.
Sequenced as is, the journey reads plateau-valley-plateau-valley-finale. In the booth it allows another reading: open with Star Creature's 115, hold Poso's 108 as a bridge, and let 'Batanayi' by Faze Action with Zeke Manyika, at 122, ramp toward the closing 125. The raw material already comes sorted for it.
Sources: Z Records · Wikipedia · Decoded Magazine
