In a year that's seen an unusual abundance of high quality dance LP releases, it says something that Layo and Bushwacka!'s 'Night Works' still stands head and shoulders above most of 2002's releases..
The dance veteran duo have for the past half a decade or so championed the minimalist groove of tech house and tech funk - a role that has been helped no small amount by Layo's position, next to Mr C, at the head of The End night club in central London.
Fitting in with the tech community's innate suspicion of commerciality, 'Night Works' is in some respects a deliberately un-commercial album.
Tracks such as 'Sahara' shimmer with spine-tingling production details and arching sweeps of emotion tugging melody. But there is no attempt to beckon to either the coffee table or radio - the usual methods of transforming dance culture into something consumable by the chattering classes and mass market.
Each track is stuffed with often subtle interest. Urgent drum licks skirting circles around the juddering bass line on the build of 'We Met Last night' surprisingly give way to a far more open jazzier arrangement, fitting oddly well under a reverberating plucked guitar line.
Plucked guitar motifs figure strongly in the album, producing a mix-and-match sound that updates DJ Shadow's early Nineties innovations with rather more panache than the innovator has managed himself.
Nowhere is this more so than on their re-working of Devo on 'Love Story'.
Although there are instances of pumping four four, such as on 'All Night Long', most of the beats here are stuttering or ripping break beats - endlessly underpinned by copious bass lines that oscillate between dub ('Sleepy Language') and funk or jazz ('Blind Tiger') derivation.
But a large part of this album's attraction is the way it effortlessly hangs together, like a much rehearsed eclectic DJ set.
Definitely in the hat for album of the year.
