Jackmaster – DJ-Kicks

Hard dancefloor graft from a true technician...

His name now adorning the mix compilation ‘big two’, Jack ‘Jackmaster’ Revill blew the ‘FABRICLIVE’ franchise wide open with a high energy criss-cross featuring some glorious, ‘oh he dropped that?’ old-skool anthems. His ‘DJ-Kicks’ show will have to go some to beat that.

The variations aren’t as wild, but that doesn’t mean you don’t notice them, the Glasgow zeitgeist keeping things moving as a supreme technician (ever the perfectionist, this final cut apparently took five takes). To start with, he takes a traditional view on how a mix should run to schedule, sizing up the dancefloor for over ten minutes, dropping a perfectly played afrohouse passage as first means of kick drum progress. These early stages becoming something of a trust exercise as Jackmaster bides his time/toys with punters in the best possible way, then tucking into the hard graft.

The first indication that the boundaries of epic are closing in is Eliphino’s ‘Isabella Road’ – small shift, big difference, the first bricks of the house that Revill built. Acid at the ready (Mike Dunn’s ‘A Groove’), into some funkiness quickly after and dipping into retro reserves that are good for all seasons, Revill settles into a groove midway that’s deep but industrious. Low on motifs and obvious signposts, mega drops and builds, a veneer of the wondrous keeps heads up and alert, never drifting into leisurely comfort.

Mr G’s ‘Transient’ is a word from the mind body and soul sponsors, dabbing brows with time honoured sentiment before the next bespoke shift starts (self-contained thriller Fango’s ‘Vena Cava’). After a booty techno flurry, Overmow’s ‘Convulsions’ throws a 1992 kitchen sink at the dancefloor to conclude, the mix establishing itself in the not over-populated category of sessions that’ll leave you thinking, ‘wow, I wonder what that’d sound like live’ – and you can imagine Jackmaster working the retinas as much as the ear canal through dark passages, warm glows and blinding white lights.

8/10

Words: Matt Oliver

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