Armand Van Helden - Ghettoblaster Redux

Label: Southern FriedScore: 8/10

Boston’s Armand Van Helden arrived with a splash nearly 20 years ago, bringing b-boy attitude and a way with killer samples to become one of the world’s most in-demand remixers. His storming rework of Tori Amos’ ‘Professional Widow’ turned clubs upside down, leading to amping up the Stones, Janet Jackson and Daft Punk.

Since then, he’s continued to demolish dancefloors in the howling party spirit of hiphop and acid house, here revisiting 2007’s Ghettoblaster, leading with Kudu’s cool vocal over the metronomic thud of ‘Playing House’ before invoking the raw, primitive spirit of late 80s Trax on ‘A Track Called Jack’, Phuture-style vocals joining his trademark rising riffs for classic Chi-style carnage [with Jackapella].

‘Je T’Aime’ whips up 808 percussion for more roughshod old school mayhem on another familiar riff, topped with Nicole Roux’s fiery vocal, proving again that nobody produces house music of such precision deadliness as Van Helden.

Tags:

Grahame Farmer

Grahame Farmer’s love affair with electronic music goes back to the mid-90s when he first began to venture into the UK’s beloved rave culture, finding himself interlaced with some of the country’s most seminal club spaces. A trip to dance music’s anointed holy ground of Ibiza in 1997 then cemented his sense of purpose and laid the foundations for what was to come over the next few decades of his marriage to the music industry.