Up Close - Benni Chawes

Advantages: Pumping good quality house at its best!
Disadvantages: it ends

...House music doesn't get much better then this people opening with the hugely popular Sing by praise cats these c.d's are remarkably mixed with a blend of pure genius to put a smile on your face delivering storming tune time and again banassi gets the blend just right to get anyone shaking the booty, with names such as Dave Clarke and who da funk on the track listings the c.d delivers all the way. The first disc starts all nice and up beat and gradually gets heavier until the end although never coming to a point were it becomes to hard its balanced just nicely and is nicely cut up. The second follows the sort of pattern with a good number of brakes on both the cds deliver a serious good mix for any fan of good decent house music, another cracker from Subliminal and Benny! Disc: 1 - 1hr 6mins 41seconds 1. Sing - Andrea Love 2... Read review

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Advantages: May be good value for money at 70 tracks across 2 CDs
Disadvantages: Melody clashes, bad mixing

...A 'mash up' in music terms, for anyone who doesn't know, is when you take the melody/backing track from one tune and the acappella (vocal) from another. So with this in mind, Ministry Of Sound have released a double CD called 'The Mash Up Mix'. Sounds intriguing (if nothing else). THE MASH UP MIX CD1 has more of a chilled out laid back summer vibe. It's slightly funkier near the end but it's not particularly upbeat so in dance terms it's close to easy listening. But how easy is it to listen to some half decent tracks being murdered? The first few tracks are relatively inoffensive to the ear but the pain begins around track 7 where Marcella Woods' euphoric vocals of 'Beautiful' collide with a rather unsuitable garage track 'Girls Like This'. The next few tracks aren't amazing but they're pretty mellow so you can sit back... Read review

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Advantages: catchy, beautiful songs with loveable rogueish characters
Disadvantages: a little too mainstream considering who it's by

...Closing Time was the very first album from Tom Waits, one of the most noted and acclaimed songwriters in American history. Since its release, Waits has spent more than thirty years making some of the most innovative and original music in the world today. However, when Closing Time came out in 1971, Waits was a practically destitute piano player, living out of cheap motels and spending his last few dollars on cheap whiskey. This is an atmosphere that pervades throughout this album. This first batch of Waits' songs is inflected with the same sense of wistful melancholy that would become more and more pronounced over all of his albums up to the mid eighties. Waits became so good at the lovelorn loser role that he was frequently nicknamed "Skid Romeo" in the music press. One noticable difference between this and Waits' later work... Read review

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