Raise Your Hands: The Greatest Hits
Skint
Now on Skint records, Xpress2 pre-empt the Chemical Brothers’ imminent collection, as the 2nd wave of dance ‘best of’s’ arrive. This mixes Xpress2’s bigger name collaborations with earlier dance-floor monsters such as ‘London Express’ and, appropriately, ‘Smoke Machine’, which both emerge pleasingly from the dry ice of woolly clubbing memories. Leading with the droll David Byrne-led ‘Lazy’ risks setting a high standard early, but actually provides lesser known gems greater voice, its over familiarity detracting from how jaw-droppingly good it was that first time we heard it.
In established dance music tradition, compensating for their facelessness, Xpress2 have roped in such an impressive line-up of singers that, as with other dance outfits, one suspects they exist solely to enable working with heroes. The grindingly built gospel house epic, ‘Give it’, is characterised by Lambchops’ Kurt Wagner’s wry, soulful vocal; while the deeper, hypnotic cut of ‘Kill 100’, with Music’s Rob Harvey, and ‘Witchi Tai To’s euphoric Balearic electronic sweep, completed by Polyphonic Spree man Tim De Laughter’s gorgeous vocal, all shine. Obligatory new track, ‘Fire’, has Afrika Bambaataa wrestling with what began as an instrumental favourite in DJ sets and sits firmly in their home-pressed white label origins. Any weakness of this collection is that it’s less representative of Ashley Beadle’s joyful affection for old school pianos, and the omission of their eccentric, whispered collaboration with Yello’s Dieter Meier, which gives way to tracks like ‘AC/DC’, which perhaps only make sense in the environment they were intended for. Tom Hocknell
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