First, a quick lesson in Green Velvet and Cajmere which makes understanding this compilation a little easier. Green Velvet and Cajmere are in fact the very same person, the rather more plainly named Curtis Jones. Now, the key to understanding why Ministry of Sound have released a double compilation album which apparently pits these two aliases against each other in a "versus" battle, is that the two monikers represent Jones' slightly different musical tastes. As Cajmere, Jones was instrumental in nurturing the Chicago house renaissance of the 1990s, and his productions under this name are typically vocal and bouncy house numbers. The Green Velvet moniker was assumed as an outlet for Jones' more non-vocal productions, typically driving tech-house numbers with amusing or gimmicky features. Lesson over.

So, to the first CD - the Cajmere selection. It's an excursion into poundingly heavy house music which one can imagine would work a treat as the wallpaper to the discerning dance music fan's Friday night out, but sounds rather less appealing in the cosy, narcotic-free home. The pace is pretty relentless, the vocals typically forgettable trance-style female wailings and in places, the mixing is, well, a bit over-the-top - do we really need to hear the faint remains of the previous track two and a half minutes into the next? I don't think so. The highlight of this CD is a reworking of 1993 classic "Brighter Days" by Cajmere with vocals from soulful house star Dajae, but that asides, the selection is unashamedly lacklustre.

Moving to the second Green Velvet branded disc, the tempo is upped a good few notches and, nodding towards techno, things get twisted. The trouble is, though, lots of it is really, really old material. As much as hearing Green Velvet's own "La La Land" brings to me a nostalgic grin so wide that it almost swallows my face and despite the seminal Armand Van Helden remix of the Sneaker Pimps' "Spin Spin Sugar" making me dance a little jig in my office chair, this isn't what people are listening to anymore. Time for Jones to hang up his headphones? Yeah, maybe. The fact alone that almost half of the tracks on the album are his own work or a collaboration is suggestive of an introverted producer unwilling to support the new-wave of DJs making forward-thinking music in the genre he championed. Disappointing stuff from someone who ought to know better.
--Sarah Chapman


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written by on 01/11/2006 00:00:00