In which Joey Negro – the most prominent of Dave Lee’s many alias names – gets his rightful place at Defected’s top table in the form of a deserved ‘Masters’ retrospective, which brings together some ubiquitous classics and a few lesser-known items. Jakatta’s cool ‘American Dream’ is probably the one we hear most, though it’s good to be reminded that it is actually a brilliant reworking of Thomas Newman’s music for ‘American Beauty’. ’Must Be The Music’ is great stuff too, and so is ‘Make A Move On Me’, available on the digital version only. Other Lee aliases to appear are the excellent Doug Willis – ‘Get Your Own’ and ‘Begun 2 Luv U’ – and Raven Maize, with ‘Forever Together’. The Joey Negro name has served really well as a remixer too, so it’s great to have his mixes of Masters At Work’s ‘Backfired’, Patrice Rushen’s ‘Haven’t You Heard’ and Blaze’s magnificent ‘Wishing You Were Here’ all in one place. If the disco-house interface is your bag you’ll probably have a lot of this already – but Defected always manage to tease out a bit more in the ‘House Masters’ series, and they’ve done it again here.
5 out of 5
Reviewed by Ben Hogwood
