Al de Leon

For a few days each March, Miami becomes the center of the dance-music industry for Winter Music Conference, an annual pilgrimage for DJs, producers and record-label honchos from across the globe. Sure there's a full schedule of seminars, and the records released there often become the year's biggest club anthems, but the real draw is the parties--daily, nightly, by the pool, on the beach--and featuring the world's best DJs. So it's no surprise that Danny Howells picked Miami as his inspiration city for Global Underground 27, the latest installment of the popular mix CD series. To support his new compilation, Howells has embarked on a tour that kicked off, rather appropriately, at WMC and makes a stop at Sound-Bar.

Global Underground 27 is a double-disc mix full of mostly mid-tempo songs that exhibit Howells' ability to build a seamless set with various styles of dance music. On the first (and better) disc, classic deep house stands out in Tomas Barfot's "Light Shine" and Mimosa's "End of Me," providing a double dose of vocals so smooth and uplifting, you can just imagine both tracks going off at a sunset party in South Beach. Another bright spot is the disco-tinged "Post-Modern Sleaze," which is the Sneaker Pimps doing their best Basement Jaxx impression--and pulling it off. Tantra's "Hills of Katmandu" channels seventies epic rock, with dirty guitar licks and percussion loops so intoxicating you can't help but shake your head to it.

The second, more danceable, disc features the darker side of Howells' sound, with techno, trance and tribal all representing. Highlights include Boogie Drama's "Stalkers Groove," with its killer bassline breakdown, and Bobby Peru's "Blood Money," a throwback to the eighties with beats you could breakdance to. Howells closes out the set with Throbbing Gristle's "Hot on the Heels of Love," a lush, progressive number with a buildup that never seems to end; in other words, it's the perfect track to send blissful clubgoers on their way back to the outside world.

Danny Howell spins April 8 at Sound-Bar, 226 West Ontario.

(2005-04-05)

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