Twins until a ridiculously prissy lawsuit, Belgium's Glimmers bastard-mix like (and unlike) fellow countrymen Soulwax, counterbalancing any disinterest in the motherfucking remix with simply riskier selections. Even on dabbler discs, Hall & Oates and War and De La can throw for damn hard loops, and yet they were all together on the duo's first Eskimo mix in 2000, ta-da.
Glimmers' DJ-Kicks entry jams electro and rock and disco-- era-deviant and occasionally generous, 18 good-to-great songs all impeccably beatmatched-- but the mix does seem somewhat tame next to their earlier recordings, not to mention recent DJ-Kicks spots from Chicken Lips and Erlend Øye. The furthest Glimmers wander from garage (and fake-garage), late 80s house, and throwback italo is into campier numbers such as Bis' cover "Shack Up" and choice gay disco cut Ragtyme's "Fix It Man". But even then, "If your drain is clogged, I got something for the job" is no "don't pass out goin' down on me/ Or I'll wake you up with a mouthful of pee."
Suum cuique, but for me the mix works infinitely better with less to prove and fewer to please-- and feels much more confident and listenable given the relative continuity of its constituent parts. My "dilettantism blew its load six months ago" riff is just hot air, I bet; let's just say I've enjoyed more streamlined tracklistings that play records or sell a sound rather than the 90-second-track, genre-challenging pissing contests celebrated (it seems) simply for existing.
Love the 'roid ragers-- Idjut Boys' edit of Bohannon's "The Boogie Train", Kerri Chandler's garage-to-deephouse timewarp "Disco Satisfaction", Kaos' "Feel Like I Feel (Sing Along)" (faster here, and more awesome with every listen)-- but respect the team players too, especially heavy dubs like Big Two Hundred's "Approach And Pass With Contact" and Lindstrøm's "Kosmisk Klubbkveld". And yet tracks this strong the Glimmers let stand alone and never merely as set-ups, perhaps reinforcing the mix's spine at the expense of a few dance-is-boring, give-me-pop whimperers.
I'm afraid I never really "got" Two Lone Swordsmen, nor have I ever appreciated the permanent aux percussion cocktease that is Rub N Tug's overglorified reedit of Chicago's "I'm a Man", so in my mind the Glimmers finish up a bit backwards. At the end I'm left with two impressions. First, I respect the duo's relative selflessness. They keep the focus on the tracks and tell a good post-garage story. Second, "this is good electro-house-disco mix, but I can't really tell it apart from the billion others I've heard."
