It seems like an age since I mercilessly pounced on a jiffy bag full of singles and tore the fucker to bits as a red haze slowly descended over my vision only for me to wake up in a park some time later with no real recollection of what had transpired, surrounded by empty beer cans and pub snack wrappers.

Kicking off today is the latest release from Private, ‘My Secret Lover’ out on January 10th. I’m struggling to describe this track without the word CHEESE leaping to the forefront of my mind. Imagine a Danish phone box lurking heavy breathing perv loitering all over this single and it’s like 2Unlimited never happened. Yes he’s rasping about the “bullets in his gun” no doubt while wearing leather trousers and an unbuttoned black silk shirt. Oh the imagery, i thought acts like this were hunted to extinction in the early nineties.

The radio edit will no doubt entertain Sharon and Gary as they obliterate ridiculous amounts of strong lager in a shit club and prepare for a domestic in a taxi rank on any given Friday night but the rest of the mixes are so frankly deplorable all those concerned should have their ears sealed up with cork plugs and then placed in a bunker.

Next up is Cascada which comes with a withering twelve mixes of their new single ‘Fever’ out on December 21st. You know the score by now, tall blonde lass drags average vocal over a hackneyed chunk of pop dance to satisfy ringtone friendly types. The only saving grace in this instance is there’s a blatant Eric Prydz rip off in the making. After all why write your own bassline when you can nab the one from ‘Pjanoo’. By the time Sharon and Gary have finished slapping each other about in the designated smoking area and staggered back to the dancefloor they’ll think they are listening to the real thing.

Finally we have Honorebel featuring Pitbull & Jump Smokers out on Positiva on January 11th. For a club track even the full Club format it comes in at a remarkably short four minutes, however in fairness all concerned manage to cram a lot into the track in that space of time without ever making it sound cluttered or needlessly complicated. Nothing life changing here you understand and the vocal is for the most part generic but you’ll hear worse. Things tighten up and get a damn site more interesting when the remixes come into play Afrojack goes knocking on Toddla T’s door with a steppy dancehall excursion while Benny Benassi does his traditional weighty 4/4 cut which should hit Gary and Sharon just as the pills kick in. Robbie Rivera bless him does his usual “how dark and tribal are my mixes” recut but it’s a winning formula and if it ain’t broke… As a whole this is a fair to middling single which is really saved by a strong package of remixes.