DJ - Kicks (Jackmaster) [DJ Mix]

Glaswegian DJ Jackmaster (a.k.a Jack Revill) is best known for his ability to traverse genres, decades, and moods in a few sweaty hours. In one set he might jump from Hudson Mohawke to Anthony Shakir to Prince; an extended house jam might morph into crisp techno; those 808s or 909s you’re hearing could be a crate digger’s treasure or a soon-to-be chart topper. With Jackmaster, the *what’s next? *and *who’s that? *are part of the adventure. He’s a DJ’s DJ and a crowd pleaser, but not one before the other.

Jackmaster is also famous for what he is not: a composer. At a time when “producer” and “DJ” are nearly synonymous, Revill’s emphasis on purely DJing is almost quaint—but also refreshing. He knows his job is to curate, mix, and recontextualize other people’s records, not make his own music, and he’s good at it. A side-effect is that releases with Jackmaster’s name attached have more significance than they might for another artist, for whom a mix might be seen as an afterthought to their LPs or singles. So, for Jackmaster, an entry in the prestigious DJ-Kicks series provides an opportunity for listeners to get a taste of what he offers in a live setting, albeit with more time for him to tinker and refine. This is as much of a Jackmaster record as we’re ever likely to get.

Because Revill isn’t a producer, he’s had to build his fan base almost entirely by working in front of an audience. He plays a lot—some 200 times in a year, he’s said—and started in his teens. Today, Jackmaster remains a fixture at Numbers, the label he helps run and which has thrown an influential party for more than a decade. (The label has released music from SOPHIE, Rustie, SBTRKT, and Jamie xx, to name a few.) He’s the sort of name that is equally comfortable at festivals like the EDM-leaning Ultra or London's fabric, where you might find him on a bill with Ricardo Villalobos. At 30, Jackmaster isn’t old by any means, but he’s a veteran who can keep jaded audiences thirsty for the unexpected, and he brings that experience to his official releases.

Like his live shows, Jackmaster’s DJ-Kicks selections are an eclectic, precise, and unflaggingly propulsive collection of old and new. Revill has said the album should been read as a love letter to the music of Detroit, Chicago, and Glasgow and it’s true that *DJ-Kicks *may be Jackmaster’s most streamlined release to date. (He’s also said that it’s a look back at his early days as a straight-forward techno DJ.)

The record takes its time heating up with a mood-setting, scene-stealing cut from 1080p staple LNRDCROY before heading off to the races with an exclusive, deftly-edited vocal-driven track from Denis Sulta called “MSNJ”—already a club hit in advance of the mix. Other up-front winners include Massimiliano Pagliara’s “I Am Running All My Drum Machines At Once And Dancing,” whose title is an accurate description of its contents: it slides seamlessly into Chicago house legend Mike Dunn’s early ’90s cut “A Groove.” Another exclusive—Alcatraz Harry’s “Ode To Frankfurt”—is a fun and funky house track.

Jackmaster saves the highest highs for the third of the mix, building to his finale slowly and assuredly. A fantastic, exclusive Tessela cut, “Up (Demo Version),” is paired with Riccardo Villalobos’ “Logohitz,” for a bit of driving techno. It’s Jackmaster at his best—a combination of the new and now with a beloved mainstay. The album ends with a three-punch denouement starting with Underground Resistance co-founder Robert Hood’s “The Pace,” then a trip to mid-’90s Detroit with Overmow’s “Convulsions,” and, finally, Pom Pom, who closes the mix breathlessly and beautifully with “POM POM 18 B2.”

According to Jackmaster, putting together *DJ-Kicks *was marred by near disaster. Assembly started in a rush while DJing on a cruise, was set back by a lost hard drive, and took four or five complete revisions before he was happy with it. Listening to the record today, however, none of those seams show. Jackmaster lets his choices breathe and doesn’t hurry from cut to cut for the sake of covering more ground, even as tracks pool together and reform anew. A fun way to listen to the record might be to read the release dates of the tracks—’90s, ’00s, ’10s—as they fly by. It's the sort of fluidity that house and techno heads appreciate and dancefloors thrive on, something you don’t often notice until it's *not *happening or too awkwardly executed to ignore. With Jackmaster, laser-focused competency becomes its own sort of thrill.