One of the assumptions underlying the concept of "artistry" is a certain critical distance from the notion of timeliness: "people will be listening to this album in 20 years' time," fans hedge, but what they mean is, "it doesn't matter how you think it sounds now." Timeliness is the attribute of the artisan, cannily anticipating and servicing customer demand; artists must either be tragically ahead of their time or blissfully oblivious to it. One senses Booka Shade are keenly aware of this distinction: Their early work as in-house production team for German house label Get Physical was thrilling in its superlative, undemonstrative timeliness, while few dancefloor anthems have felt more "right now" than their mid-decade anthems "Mandarine Girl" and "In White Rooms". But herein lies the rub: Having carved out a sound that was increasingly identifiable, the duo risk being left behind by European dance music's relentless march toward the new, the next thing.
If Booka Shade were feeling exhausted by the prospect of keeping pace, a contribution to !K7's DJ-Kicks series offers the perfect escape route: Dominated by performers with a tenuous foothold perch on the dancefloor (Annie, Erlend Øye, Hot Chip), its best efforts have been from dance producers (Playgroup, Henrik Schwarz) stretching to paint on a broader canvas, using polystylistic, multi-era selections to precariously walk the artist-artisan tightrope, suggesting that they, too, were more than just a passing fad. Booka Shade dutifully follow suit, but their leap towards artistic eclecticism can fall short of its destination. For the most part, the tried-and-true insertion of ostentatiously individual and antiquarian favourites into their first DJ mix is a strategic error: the use of John Carpenter instrumentals works well, and I'll allow the inclusion of Yazoo and Heaven 17's jerky synth-pop, but tracks by Aphex Twin and the Streets in particular stand out as great pieces of music whose sore thumb status here does them no favors-- the painful slow-down and speed-up in and out of Aphex's "Alberto Balsam" is probably the album's most forced-sounding, artificial moment.
Ironically, the most captivating moments on this mix are the string of spectral and dazzlingly unpredictable recent house tunes: Amir Ad Fontes' Amazonian "Virtual Nature", Quarion's rippling and rhapsodic "Play Your Part", Noze's darkly romantic "Slum Girl", or the duo's own glittering "Estoril". Were they too quick to abandon up-to-date production as a reigning principle? It's hard to say: it would be a shame to lose Carl Craig's glittering classic "Landcruising". Perhaps the issue is that Booka Shade are sound-designers and collaborators more than they are DJs: Their true talent is not for creating links between disparate sounds, but rather for swelling up one sound to suit a variety of purposes, and DJ-Kicks is strongest when it remains within the duo's own vein of highly polished sci-fi romanticism. This isn't a limitation: The mix's most impressive quality is how vast and all-encompassing this niche can feel.
And when the sonics fit, Booka Shade's aesthetic expands effortlessly to embrace songfulness: the Wahoo remix of Ben Westbeech's "Hang Around" is gorgeously dramatic house-pop (and marvellously buffed up in this mix with atmospherics from Cerrone's "In the Smoke"-- the album's most impressive mixing feat), but I particularly like the winsome vibe of Hot Chip's sighing remix of Matthew Dear's "Don & Sherri" and Booka Shade's own, achingly perfect "Numbers". Both circulate around plaintive refrains: "How can I let you forget me/ If you don't even know me already?", and "What's your number?/ I really want you…" What the latter lacks in lyrical clarity it makes up with sweeping grandeur, decomposing synth chimes and lachrymose strings somehow conveying perfectly that implausible (but nonetheless real) coincidence of dancefloor seduction with metaphysical redemption.
It's one of the duo's great and inscrutable production tricks that their descents into outright tearfulness always come as a slight surprise, even on the umpteenth listen-- but then, it's precisely at these moments that the relationship between art and craft in their music becomes mysterious and indecipherable. The ultimate timeliness and sonic precision of DJ-Kicks' best moments shouldn't come as a disappointment: if Booka Shade remain "mere" craftsmen, their capacity to unexpectedly tug so hard on the heartstrings is a skill more artists in dance music should strive for.
