Dance Mania

Illustrator: Matt Jeffs.
Credit Hamburg, Germany native Alexander Ridha, aka Boys Noize, for doing his part to pay part of a debt owed to Dance Mania, an early and innovative Chicago house label that has inspired younger generations of producers, and has fed a handful of subgenres, across the planet. An atypical tribute album, the misleadingly titled Boysnoize Presents Dance Mania is a compilation of new tracks with the aim of emulating the stripped-down, hard-hitting, sometimes vulgar sound of the Dance Mania catalog. For some serious, history-aware house heads, Ridha and Housemeister's "1988" -- with its sampled vocal interjections of "ghetto" and "1988" over a relatively slick and easier-to-make beat -- will have about as much merit as a white contemporary blues band singing about picking cotton. The majority of the contributions, such as SCNTST's "Change Dat Tape," Bart B More's "Bounce," and Audionite's "Trax-O-Matic," come from young Europeans, while original Dance Mania producer DJ Funk chips in with "High Frequency," the set's wildest, most effective track. When compared to the rest of the Boysnoize catalog, this compilation is adequate. ~ Andy Kellman