Search results: Club B4

Review: 'Brat' is Charlotte Emma Aitchison's sixth studio album as Charli XCX, the follow-up from her "sell-out era", 2022's 'Crash' which topped multiple charts and gave the British pop singer a newfound notoriety that she had long been deserving. A longtime collaborator with PC Music founder and Beyonce-credited producer A.G. Cook, whose production can be found in the album's latest double single 'Club Classics/B2b', Charli is returning to her roots of dance music and electronic pop - a far cry from the hazy alt-pop she launched her career with. Following the launch of 'Von dutch', the lead single produced by PC Music producer EASYFUN (aka Finn Keanne), Charli has gone on record saying that this is her best body of work - a title that once belonged to the cult classic mixtape 'Pop 2' - and it's easy to see why, the blaring synths and honed in club music focus is unlike anything anybody in the mainstream pop sphere is doing right now. Pressed on a translucent black vinyl, and coupled with one of the best album covers maybe of all time, it's never been a better time to be one of Charli's angels.

Review: Arthur Baker is the perfect host for this new series from Demon Music which focuses on the famous extended remixes of the 80s. Each series will be a multi-disc, various artist collection that is united by one remixer, and there can be few better to kick it off than the legend that is Shep Pettibone. He was a hugely in demand studio hand who reworked multiple genres and everyone from Pet Shop Boys to Duran Duran, New Order to Level 42, George Michael to Erasure. This ambitious, widescreen collection takes in all manner of golden remixes from the world of soul, pop, synth and more.

Review: Until he quit the music industry in the mid-1990s, Shep Pettibone was the most in-demand remixer on the planet - a position he'd held since the late 1970s. This four-disc compilation does a great job of showcasing some of his greatest remixes, all of which are presented in full-length form. There's naturally plenty of versions of big pop singles of the '80s - see the epic 'Mastermix' of Pet Shop Boys' 'West End Girls', as well as rubs of Duran Duran, New Order, Whitney Houston and Belinda Carlisle - as well as a sprint through his celebrated disco and boogie reworks (see disc four). In addition, you'll find versions of some lesser-celebrated gems from the freestyle-era, including heavyweight revisions of Sinammon, Alisha, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam and The Flirts.

Review: The art of the remix is no doubt indebted to NYC legends such as Shep Pettibone and Arthur Baker. It's quite fitting then that the latter should curate some of the greatest moments of the former on part two of The Classic 12 Inch Master Mixes Volume One. Pettibone's innovative approach to remixing throughout the '80s and early '90s has had a lasting impact on dance music. Featured on here are his renditions of B B & Q's '(I'm A) Dreamer' where he gets that perfect late night boogie-down vibe in effect, as well as Lionel Richie's classic 'Love Will Conquer All', perfectly streamlining the groove of The Salsoul Orchestra's 'Ooh, I Love It (Love Break)' and lending his deft hand to First Choice's anthemic 'Let No Man Put Asunder' among many others.

Review: If you ever need to demonstrate the queer foundations of dance music, just reach for this authoritative compilation - case closed. Demon Music Group have gathered together a mighty 24 tracks of seminal hi-nrg, synth-pop, proto house, Eurobeat and more besides to paint a picture of the vibrant culture which set the tone for house and techno to come. There are some monster hits in this four-vinyl set including Whitney Houston's 'Love Will Save The Day', Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Relax' and Dead or Alive's 'You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)', all presented in their finest extended mix forms. There's also more than enough deep cuts to satisfy the more seasoned diggers out there and the artwork is on point, making this a fitting tribute to the 80s gay nightlife which incubated a new kind of dance music.

Review: Fierce, fabulous and more than a little fancy, Box Of Sin takes an exhaustive look at 80s gay nightlife as the driver for the evolution of dance music. Spread over five CDs, we're taken on a sweat-slicked thrill ride through hi-nrg, disco, proto house and synth-pop taking in seminal classics and deep cuts alike. There are plenty of perennial favourites contained within, from The Pointer Sisters' 'Jump (For My Love)' and Soft Cell's 'Memorabilia' through to S'Express' massive chart dance banger 'Theme From S'Express', and you can be sure the compilers have taken care to source the real deal 12" mixes that bring out the best in a track. With plenty of lesser known surprises and a frankly head-spinning amount of knockout tracks, this is an essential document of the outsized impact queer club culture had on electronic music in the 80s and early 90s.

Review: Few electronic music producers can claim to have made quite as big an impact as Arthur Baker. During the 1980s the New Yorker was involved in creating (or mixing) a string of ground-breaking electro, freestyle and proto-house records, before becoming one of the most in-demand remixers on the planet. This vast box set, which includes six weighty slabs of vinyl and an informative insert, celebrates his legacy, offering up a mixture of pioneering productions (Afrika Bambaata and Soulsonic Force's 'Planet Rock', 'Walking On Sunshine' by Rockers Revenge, 'Confusion' by New Order), dancefloor anthems (Freez's 'I.O.U', his enormous rework of Fleetwood Mac's 'Big Love') and a string of essential but lesser-celebrated revisions - all presented in full-length, DJ-friendly form. In a word: essential.

Review: After launching the Dance Masters series with a much-needed trawl through the remixography of the great Shep Pettibone, Arthur Baker has now turned his attention to his own sprawling catalogue of productions and remixes. Stretched over four discs in order to present full-length, DJ-friendly mixes, the collection does a great job in showcasing Baker's immense achievements in the 1980s and 90s. Naturally, his most celebrated productions and remixes are present - see his versions of Fleetwood Mac's 'Big Love', which became Balearic anthems, Afrika Bambaata and Soulsonic Force's genuinely game-changing 'Planet Rock', Freez's 'I.O.U', Rockers Revenge's 'Walking on Sunshine' and New Order's 'Confusion' - alongside a swathe of forgotten, overlooked and harder to find revisions.