JX – Close To Your Heart

This track is easily the most underrated of the JX discography. Not quite as accessible as the happy-go-lucky Son Of A Gun or the joyfully uplifting There's Nothing I Won't Do, but packing such a powerful punch that it makes the tranceheads weak at the knees. Commercially, it still reached the Top Twenty in the UK, but it was clearly more suited to the clubs. The 12" mix is filled with twists and turns, including a full two bars of silence before the vocal drops, which is a guaranteed attention-grabber on the dancefloor as even if you know what's coming it still feels like a very long pause!

My only complaint is that we could have done with a few more remixes - given the darker nature of the track, I can't help imagining a mix by Man With No Name or the Digital Blonde would have sounded incredible.

The Immortals remix is quite excellent, four to the floor beats build with swirling pads that transform into that Hooj Choon "trademark" breaks sounds, keeping the vocal loops without it becoming annoying. At about 8 minutes it breaks down to come back again for an extended run on a more four to the floor trance vibe again. A real journey of a remix!

Was intrigued by the Matthew Roberts mix, which, going though old Essential Selection track listings I found Pete tong had played it on a show once.A google search revealed it was only available to buy digitally on itunes of all places, I've created a video and uploaded to youtube, so everyone can hear it after all these years by finding the video among the ones on the right hand side.

This remix has very little to do with the original track at all except for a very brief bit of vocal, mostly sampling bits of Perpetual Motions - Keep On Dancing.