Various Artists mixed by Dave Clarke
Fabric 60
Fabric Records
Sometimes the amount of remix that flows out of the Fabric London site is overwhelming. This is collection number 60, and there’s a solid hour plus set here with 17 tracks. They flow effortlessly together, if you ignore the little voice they put in to the press download that reminds you not to pass this around to your friends on the evil anti-music interweb. DJ Clarke wears the mandatory dark glasses, keeps one ear on the cue track, and mixes a bass-heavy, Detroit-influenced dance mix that grinds on a gut level. Sometimes we get pure beats, sometimes ironic vocals drop in for a guest slot as on Marc Romboy vs. Paris the Dark Fu’s “Dark and Lovely” – let your mind wander back to the Divinyl’s when this mix chants, “City streets – City beats – Dark and Lovely – I touch myself.” Autoerotic trance – clearly someone’s not doing something right tonight. More irony on “IDFDFI” (If It Don’t Fit Don’t Force It) from another chanting group called Ray 7 & Malik Alston, and it seems a variety of sexual problems are popping up tonight. Of course, I’m always stumped by the technical problem of giving credit where it’s due – Mr. Clarke picks the songs, which are remixed by other DJs, and somewhere up north there’s a guy in a basement mixing the original. Clearly there’s no royalty check to split up, but I’d like to credit the right people in the right priority. But I’ll credit Clarke for sticking to his genre – this is dark downbeat music, and not something your ballroom dancing friends will cotton to if this is their first club experience. But if you’re a pale-skinned type who rarely sees the sun and grooves to a focused rhythm, dig in.
Fabric London: http://www.fabriclondon.com/store/fabric-60.html • Dave Clarke: http://www.daveclarke.com
