The Vitals:

Label: Hype Music
Genre: House
Number of Tracks: 4
How to Obtain: (Unknown at time of review)

Factor Scores:

Production Quality: 8.0
Programming and Arrangement: 8.0
Entertainment Quality: 7.0
Total: 7.7 - Good

Dual Core's Take:

This release is a fairly straightforward collection of four mixes of the Leigh Vincent track "Oscar Flamenco." Although these mixes all retain enough common elements to be recognized as the same song, there is surprising variety across the four tracks. All four mixes use guitar to good effect and have a pleasing, even exciting, sense of forward motion sometimes absent in house music.

The release opens with "Lee Nielsen's Remix," the version of Oscar Flamenco that I am most ambivalent about. While Nielsen does some very cool things with the song, including my favorite opening bars of the EP, it isn't cohesive. As a listener, I find that the multiple drops and breakdowns in this mix sound more like false endings than punctuations. In fact, the first time that I listened to the EP, I looked at my iPod repeatedly, alternately thinking I had moved on to track two or had unwittingly shuffled in a song from another release. I suspect most fans of the genre want their house to hang together more tightly than this.

There is an upside to all of these drops and breakdowns. A DJ can easily cut in at any of these transition points and play out the sections of "Lee Nielsen's Remix" that he or she likes best. Perhaps "Oscar Flamenco: Lee Nielsen Remix" should be re-titled "Oscar Flamenco: DJ Tools."

Leigh Vincent's "Original Guitar Mix" appears second. It features the song's unusually good guitar part more than any of the other tracks but does so to the exclusion of the song's limited, but very tasty, vocals. Although the guitar is probably the song's strongest and most distinguishing element, the vocals add so much elsewhere on the record that I think they represent a missed opportunity on this track.

Third, the "Steve Tempo Mix," is the EP's longest and most conventional track. Its pulsing house groove evolves with gentle changes to instrumentation. Don't misinterpret; "conventional" and "gentle" aren't code for "boring" or "repetitive." This mix sustains the forward motion that characterizes the whole EP's feel and makes good use of a lively variety of sounds including "Oscar Flamenco's" stand-out guitar. While the "Steve Tempo Remix" is unremarkable in many ways, it is arranged and mixed intelligently enough that it holds up for its entire 11:47 run time.

The "Curl & Dean Breaks Remix," as the title implies, takes "Oscar Flamenco" into breaks territory and is funky in an entirely different way than the other mixes. The house faithful may be disappointed to hear that this is my favorite track on the EP. Additional syncopation in the drums more than makes up for the lack of four-to-the-floor house throb and propels the track forward more strongly than the first three mixes.

This EP is certainly worth a listen for fans of contemporary house. The inclusion of the "Burl & Dean Breaks Remix" should put it on other people's radar as well.