- Artist
- Armand Van Helden
- Label
- Southern Fried Records
- Release date
- 7th May 2006
- Genre
- House
Legendary pioneer applies himself once more, drops the ego and produces contender for dance album of the year
Armand Van Helden has, for years, been one of the most innovative producers working in house music - inventing speed garage, sampling Gary Numan's Cars for club smash Koochy - and while his albums (apart from his masterpiece 2Future4U) haven't been coherent, they've always contained a couple of stone cold classics.
Ghettoblaster is different. Van Helden has taken a look at dance music from the mid Eighties to early Nineties and produced an outstanding collection of songs, taking in influences as diverse as Roxanne Shante, Rob Base and Mantronix, and hearkening back to a time when you could say "jack your body" with no sense of shame. Gone are the looped, filtered samples of modern, homogenous house; instead, we find digital basslines, funky synths, hip-house stylings featuring Fat Joe (Touch Your Toes), It Takes Two-alike breaks (Playmate) and ass-shaking disco (I Want Your Soul, Go Crazy!, Still In Love). Retro as hell, but unmissable.
More to try: Medicine8: Ironstylings Deekline And Wizard: Breaks, Beats and Blondes Stanton Warriors: Stanton Session vol 2 Daft Punk: Discovery
