VA: Full Body Workout Volume 10
Get Physical Music

The old adage “truth in advertising” springs to mind here, with Get Physical rolling out in business-like manner the tenth volume in its Full Body Workout series. Polished house music is the predominating style in ten jams that exude the expected Get Physical polish. It's an unfussy collection featuring seventy minutes of bass-powered club music, much of it high-spirited and not intended to eradicate global warming, world hunger, or the like.

Smash TV's “Stop Me” certainly gets things off on the good foot, with the duo and MZ Sunday Luv riding an infectiously swinging house groove that won't be denied. Argy serves up a furiously jacking take on Flashmob's “Ninety Five” that's even more feverish than Smash TV's opener, while Just Be's pumping “Dusty Fingers” likewise stokes a ferocious, floor-filling fire. It's often the beats one notices most, especially when they're as punchy as they are in a cut like “Wurlitzer & Cocktail” by Dachshund & Quenum. One could strip away all the voice-related silliness going on overtop and still be captivated by the primal pulse that thunders with such bulldozer-like force.

Some producers set the bar a little too low (e.g., Nolan's “Skat,” which, though pleasant enough, plays like a too-repetitive jam), while others are more ambitious, including Javier Logares whose “Balaklava” takes the listener on a spaced-out, eleven-minute ride through dramatic episodes of funky house that culminate in a fabulously hard-grooving moment eight minutes in. It's Tiger Stripes and Chris James that deserve the biggest applause on this outing, however. As much haunting song as dancefloor workout, Tiger Stripes' “Runaways” stands out for its old-school, stutter-funk groove and foreboding G-man riffs, as does Chris James's “My Love” for its sensually slinky pulse (not to mention a bass line that Get Physical's Booka Shade would be proud to call its own).

January 2013