Masters At Work - Soul Heaven Presents Masters At Work

To be honest, I found this cd very dull and at times painful to listen to. Not recommended at all. Kings of House is the last good mix I've heard from MAW.

Louie (CD1)

Concerning Louie Vega on his OWN, the last truly gripping mix I've heard from Louie was in 2004 for Azuli (Choice). His Soul Heaven mix from 2003 (London: Ibiza) was also excellent. Every mix from then on in has left me somewhat cold.

To me, Louie's mix leaves a lot to be desired. Yes, it is immaculately mixed and some of the tricks are extremely clever. There is no doubting that Louie is a technologically adroit dj. However, it's all very familar territory with the same tracks present that every other dj has been banging out for the last 2 years etc. I find it very dull overall as a mix. It goes no where.

This CD cannot compare with classic Louie mixes of yesteryear such as:

United DJ's of America Vol 2
Burrell Brothers Present New York Underground + the ones I've mentioned above.

Kenny (CD2):

Kenny's mix is easily the worst thing I've ever heard from him. It starts off fairly well with Ruffneck and his passable mix of Skyy. However, it truly descends into awfulness at track 6. Not soulful, not deep just typically bad electro that can be heard at any crap ritzy. Wahoo - Shake it, also has perhaps the most cringeworthy rap I can remember in a house song. Absolutely awful.

Some good tracks like Traffic by Manoo & francois A on Kenny's mix but unfortunately outweighed by the dross.

This the worst mix I can remember from MAW and pales into significance compared to Ministry of Sound - Sessions 5.

On their first installment for Defected in 2004 ("SoulHeaven presents Masters At Work"), the Masters turned it an authoritative 2 CD mix that covered their familiar territory of Deep/Soulful House, with all the usual inflections (Latin, Jazz, Hip–Hop, and even Gospel), exclusive track selections, and seamless mixing that have marked the signature work of this team over the past decade. That mix was attributed entirely to MAW, whereas on the present outing we are treated to a "deconstruction" of the MAW sound: Louie Vega gets to mix on the first disc, while Kenny Dope takes over on the second.

The more appropriate analogy here, therefore, is with the pair of 2003 releases "SoulHeaven Presents London_Ibiza" by Louie Vega (suSU) and "In The House: Kenny Dope" (Defected). Whereas Vega leans towards a softer sound that's more Latin and soulful in spirit, Dope takes an edgier approach to modern House music, using hip–hop and rap to invigorate his 2003 mix, and various shades of Acid to spice up the proceedings on Disc 2 of the present mix.

With Louie Vega, track credits only tell you so much about what's going on, given his fondness for deconstruction, reconstruction, mixing, mashing, remixing, and rehashing, i.e., "tweaking" on a massive scale (but so expertly executed that it's all but inconspicuous). On Disc 1, these studio pyrotechnics reach an unmistakable high point on track 1.11 with what must be the finest House record of 2006, a sumptuous but uncredited rework of Moloko's "Forever More" which satisfies every craving for a fitting arrangement to accompany Roísín Murphy's rapturously beautiful vocal that the artist's original version sadly failed to deliver.

François K and Eric Kupper had long ago realized the potential of the Murphy vocal and, with their customary professionalism, delivered a deliciously spacey, Deep Techno House remix of "Forever More" in 2003 that turned out to be a marvelous piece of underground dance music. Vega's overhaul of this song remains a bit of a mystery (the liner notes are completely silent), but it seems that (like FKEK) he has gutted everything except Murphy's vocal, and then set it against a sumptuous Balearic backdrop that is a dubby, uptempo variant of his signature sound on production/remix work branded under the "Elements Of Life", "Roots", and "Criola" marques (in fact, the backdrop sounds suspiciously like Vega's Criola Remix of DJ Grégory's "Elle"). With its lushly swirling, dubbed–out synths and robustly rocking Latin–flavored bassline and percussion arrangements, this track works equally well at home and on the dancefloor (Danny Krivit, among others, has been featuring it in his live sets). My only complaint is that it hasn't (yet) been released in any format other than on DJ mixes, which include Sandy Rivera's recently released "Renaissance — The Masters Series Part 8" and a forgettably commercial mix this summer on Defected by its chief hack (in both cases giving "proper" credit to DJ Grégory).

Another fine example of Vega's masterful tweaking can be found on tracks 1.14 and 1.15, where River Ocean's "Love & Happiness (São Benitez Sun Rise Mix)" is stripped down to an acapella over beats and mashed with Julien Jabre's 2005 near–classic "Swimming Places" (the refrain from the latter gets going 45 seconds into track 1.14 even though it's officially billed as track 1.15). Although most listeners would prefer "Swimming Places" exactly as it is, Vega shows us an alternative, equally plausible view of the world, which is precisely what great DJs are supposed to do: taking other people's records and making his own records out of them (as John Creamer put it in slightly different context).

Disc 2 by Kenny Dope starts off reliably in Deep/Garage House mode, then takes us into a Retro–Acid reverie with Kerri Chandler's "Bar A Thym" before meandering for a track or two into the sort of Acido–Electro–Progressive territory where you would expect to find Steve Lawler and his ilk. Thing is, this kind of sequencing (herding softer, more traditional styles of House into the jaws of Ironic Disco and Progressive House) has been done umpteen times before by genre–straddling jockeys with names like Rivera, Tengalia, and Howells, to name but a few useful ones. And there's little point in drawing comparisons with the heavyweights of the Global Underground jetset unless Dope is out to poke fun at their inherent limitations: he stands heads and shoulders above those blokes anyway. That said, by the time we get to track 2.09, he has pulled back into more familiar Dope territory i.e., fleshy House music set alight with rap and some permutation breakbeat, broken beats, and marching beats (a legacy of the Adonis style of early Acid House and its excessive use of the snare drum?). Both fans of Dope and of the SoulHeaven series will certainly not be disappointed by this mix, but perhaps it is not quite the pathbreaking effort that was 2003's "In The House: Kenny Dope" or, indeed, the Retro–Funk meets Broken Beats mix that he dropped this year on disc 1 of "Southport Weekender Vol. 5" (Endulge).

Disc 3 compiles (unmixed) eight House tracks which Vega and Dope cite (with their typical modesty) as their "Influences and Inspirations", even though they had a hand in producing and/or tweaking most of them. The tracks by Manzel and Eddie Palmieri, in particular, are not to be missed.