Alan Braxe and Friends- 'The Upper Cuts' (PIAS) Released 13/06/05

In the years BE (Before Electro), prior to this frosty German winter of harsh Teutonic beats and Kraftwerkian bleeps, house was dominated by the French sound of sunny Eurodisco.  In the clubs it was perpetual summer, and there was one anthem guaranteed to melt even the coldest of hearts: ‘Music Sounds Better With You’ by Stardust, AKA Thomas Bangalter and Alan Braxe.  Since then, Berlin has supplanted Paris as the centre of the dance universe, Bangalter’s ‘other band’ Daft Punk have wandered so far off the beaten path they’d need a map to locate the dancefloor… and Braxe?  Well, the unsung hero of French house has been holed up in his studio, quietly but consistently channelling disco delights direct to your booty.

Listening to ‘The Upper Cuts’ is like attending a reunion of strangely familiar faces.  You’ve been dancing to these grooves for years, you just didn’t know who was responsible for them.  Although ‘Music Sounds Better…’ is the obvious highlight, Braxe’s 1996 debut ‘Vertigo’ is instantly recognisable as the club hit that introduced the world to the French filtered sound- think early Daft Punk without the vocoder overkill.  Equally irresistible is 2000’s ‘Intro’, with its insistent stop-start drums, funky-as-hell bassline and catchy hook lifted from The Jets’ ‘Crush On You’- way before the likes of Mylo and Prydz made sampling 80s cheese de rigeur.  And Braxe’s unforgettable remix of Shakedown classic ‘At Night’ is the most relentless slice of robo-disco Morodor never made.

Even the less-familiar material on this collection of Braxe’s solo tracks and collaborations quickly endears itself.  ‘In Love With You’, recorded with crooner Romuald as The Paradise, is a perfect end-of-the-night house ballad- all swooning synths and dreamy layered vocals; oddly reminiscent of 10CC’s ‘I’m Not In Love’.  And ‘Arena’, with its crowd noise and ‘Radio Ga Ga’ handclaps, sounds like a vintage live track from the coolest electro-pop band ever.  The only disappointment is ‘Link’n’Rings’ by hip hop group Rec, produced by Braxe, and obviously included here to demonstrate the different releases on his Vulture imprint.  In amongst all these dance anthems, its thug-by-numbers gangsta squeal sticks out like a sore thumb.

However, as a snapshot of a time when Parisian house had the world at its feet, ‘The Upper Cuts’ will be hard to beat, and the vinyl version is set to become an indispensable dancefloor-filling tool for DJs everywhere.