As a DJ, producer, and head of one of the most interesting electronic music labels around, Luciano has fashioned himself something of an ideal character for those of us who appreciate both cerebral rhythm studies and diva-decked house classics spun at just the right time. He's championed the former with some of the odd, starchy curios put out by his label, Cadenza, and he's advocated for the latter in closely monitored DJ sets-- many of which flit through the file-trade ether-- that sound ready to argue that the right time for diva-decked house classics is, more or less, all the time.
Luciano is an ideal choice for a Fabric mix, then, especially at a time when many have started to question where heady dance music might yet stand to wander in terms of style and approach. One realm that remains forever fertile is governed by manic, messy thrills, the kind that suggest vigorous manhandling but seem only to really happen by happy accident. That's the realm that Luciano nails on Fabric 41.
Unlike Ricardo Villalobos' storied Fabric 36 from last year-- an impressive feat of self-possession that nonetheless lacked a certain something in measures of vitality-- Luciano's set beds down with thrills and lets the smart parts tumble out for the taking. The mix starts off seemingly in a holding pattern, with Rhadoo's "Slagare" loitering at the ready for something to click into it. That comes by way of an a cappella track in Spanish and then, quickly, a burst of bass and zone-out strobes in "Yo Momo" by D'Julz. None of the above is easy to isolate in a mixing method that's all about overlap: Indeed, Luciano is a master of interstitial mixes so kinetic that the tracks themselves seem to be eagerly listening in to figure out how exactly they might be meant to go together.
A track by Los Updates takes a curious turn with singer Jorge González sighing an ambivalent tale of a club where bank tellers dance to the hits in an atmosphere that is "no much fun," but Luciano's own remix of it also introduces Latin rhythmic accents that grow more hectic and humid as the set rolls on. From there it grows bigger and funkier, with gliding house by Alex Picone and warm bass by Johnny D, before taking a sort of breathless breather with M83's moody organ ode "In Church".
It's not long before the celestial cedes to the earthy, however, in Inner City's "Good Love", a vocal-strewn track goosed-up with big splashing handclaps and miniaturist whirligig turns in another Luciano remix. They're the kind of casual but catalytic adornments that Luciano seems to add by just the simplest of whims, and they're shaken all over a Fabric mix that makes good on the idea of a mix-CD meaning something while answering its charge to do something, too.
