A natural impulse when considering a record like Azari & III's solo debut might be to explain it as the sum of its influences, the individual 1990s club tracks that filled dancefloors in New York, New Jersey, and Chicago, the Steve Silk Hurley and Todd Terry remixes that launched a thousand hips. But Azari & III's music fits in with a contemporary context more readily: They are pastiche artists. Like Hercules and Love Affair, Azari & III have become an album act who are occasional dancefloor producers, incorporating signifiers of a certain era-- in this case, late-1980s and early-90s house and rave music-- and tying them together with a distinctive production aesthetic and saleable personalities. In contrast with Hercules and Love Affair, Azari & III's music moves the timeline forward, stretching into early-90s pop house and shifting the overarching sound from the sparser, restrained mastering of Andy Butler and company into a harsher, big-room aesthetic with a technoid edge.
This approach to the past puts them firmly in the lineage of groups like Chromeo. Although the latter deal primarily with vocal-heavy 1980s funk and R&B, Azari & III have a similar sense of lighthearted irreverence balanced with a genuine interest in capturing the fun spirit of the source material, and their enthusiasm for camp can also be a hit or miss proposition. "Reckless (With Your Love)"-- by far the greatest song Azari & III have produced-- transcends its reference-heavy approach, establishing itself as an anthem for any generation. Its strength is in its contradictions: A muscular groove is at once assertive and vulnerable, a context at once hyper-specific (one can't help but envision the specter of AIDS in its thematic DNA) and universally immediate.
Surprisingly, the bulk of the LP moves in a different direction. Rather than focus on pop-house, the group gestures toward the kinds of instrumental house and techno sounds that were big as the 90s began. The most successful of these instrumental moments front-load the LP: "Tunnel Vision" has a tense acid-house edge, and "Indigo" feels like a euphoric journey into rave past. These tracks emulate the overall vibe of the era effectively, providing a guided tour through some of the music's more interesting aesthetic ideas.
The album's more forgettable tracks fill the album's second part: They might have been more effective if they'd lunged for the pop jugular. "Infiniti"-- a spacey instrumental similar to those rediscovered, recreated, and re-edited throughout the past few years of cosmic disco revival-- does little to leave a mark. The same could be said for "Change of Heart"'s well-executed dreaminess; it sounds nice while playing, but aside from retaining the overall production aesthetic, it doesn't cohere much. One exception is the maximal industrial cacophony of "Undecided", which is a decidedly unique look for the group. Its abrasive ambition recalls some of Basement Jaxx's more kitchen-sink productions.
Unlike "Reckless (With Your Love)", the group's second big single, "Hungry for the Power", shows the weakness of their methodology. There's a comical underpinning to the menace that feels a bit like playing early-90s pop radio dress-up. There's also a bit of an M.C. Escher quality to irreverence for music that was already irreverently dramatic. But it is still a fresh enough aesthetic move to feel novel now, and after the record's weaker second half, it's a refreshing move towards pop immediacy. Really, though, its the earlier track "Lost in Time" that best sums up the record's appeal-- on one level, it's about the dancefloor as an escape, while on another, it winks at the group's time travels.
