In the rapidly-evolving world of dance music, it’s unusual to find an act revisiting something they released just a few years back, but Soul Mekanik’s Eighty One was hammered in the clubs and by Radio One’s main players, while selling heartily. Its lush boogie textures, thumping grooves and imaginative vocal touches haven’t dated. Here they’re bolstered by a bonus disc of remixes by the likes of Maurice Fulton (pure class on the piano-led Go Upstairs), Freeform Five, Cosmic Me and the mighty Greg Wilson and his eternal boogie machine letting fly on Wanna Get Wet, previously the album’s big single and now capable of a return bout.
The men behind this superbly executed and unashamedly hedonistic excursion into dancefloor nirvana are veteran DJ-producer Kelvin Andrews and Danny Spencer, formerly 90s club titans Sure Is Pure (while the latter was also in Candy Flip, of chart-topping Strawberry Fields Forever fame in the early 90s). The final track, Kaghoul’s 10-minute rework of I’ll Call You, drifts into a dreamy cover of Bowie’s Sound & Vision, helping to transform what was previously a set of strong songs into a newly-sprayed clubbing odyssey.
