Out this week is none other the first Wax:On compilations CD released through Music Response Records. The Wax : On name has already played host to such dance music luminaries as Erol Alkan, Rusko, Felix Da Housecat and many more. So as you can imagine this first outing on CD aims high being left in the very capable hands of Fake Blood and residents People Get Real.

Blood’s disc takes you on a twenty two track journey that kicks off in high gear and doesn’t pause for breath taking you out with ‘I Think I Like It’ from then on it’s an hour of bright top end laced beats intermingled with all manner of sexy squeaks, creaks and whistles as we tour tracks like ‘Rasp’ from Jay Robinson & Supabeatz right into the furtive bass laden ‘Klezmer’ by Pizeta, (loaded with horn action that shouldn’t work yet does). The disc keeps delivering moments like this moving from those dark up close intimate drops back out to the big showy “jerk ya back” tracks (Peanut Club et al). Even The Gossip who personally have failed to impress since their early showing get the treatment as ‘Love Long Distance’ makes an appearance in suitably choppy form. It alternates along these lines for the duration of the mix, always maintaing a solid uptempo formula but bringing the textures up and down over the top to give you a nice touch of variety all over this mix (add to this pretty much everything on here being box fresh). An inventive quality mix of the kind we have come to expect from Fake Blood.

The second CD is a little less quirky and a little more on the retrospective side, as Wax:On is now five years old we get something of a backwards glance courtesy of People Get Real. In terms of the mix this starts with more of a late summer vibe, an overall gentler affair but that’s no detriment to this compilation (you need a breather after the first CD) and there are some pleasing little quirks going on here with some nice vocal glitches and trickling acid basslines with insistent synth stabs that weave in and out of the tracks (Marcello’s Shogun for example). Once again the pace holds nicely but the build this time has a lot more discretion, darker in tone and a bit moodier than the first disc. This is the alternative shade to the first disc’s light. Pretty damn fine it is too.

I’ll give this compilation an overall recommendation, you want my honest opinion this is the best mix CD I’ve been sent in absolutely ages. Essential.