Given the success of their own soul inspired long-players, Rae & Christian are the most obvious contributors so far to compile a home mix tape of preferred late-night listening for the Another Late Night series. Having previously collaborated with the likes of soul legend Bobby Womack, it's little surprise that vintage funk is their main focus. Starting from the imposing horns of Trendsetter's "Heavy Worker", every ghetto strut from sleazy disco (Joshua's "Come On") to Latin boogaloos (Aromadozeski Therapy's "Strudel Strut") via easy down-tempo (Riton's "Put That On My Momma") and hi-tech electro (Mr Scruff's mix of Capoeira Twins "Four") is covered on route to a glorious climax with flamenco guitarist Jose Feliciano's aching cover of the Mamas and the Papas classic "California Dreaming". With so much funk and so many break beats on offer, this third instalment of Another Late Night is as much a gift to disillusioned hip-hop heads as it is dance-floor weary clubbers in search of something stylish to unwind to. Low slung and wilfully eclectic, it's also every inch a Rae & Christian album. -Dan Gennoe.

The hype is strong for Ego War. Trumpeted by the dance-music press as one of 2003's "next big things", London's Audio Bullys have been causing something of a stir with their fuzzy soundsystem beats, loud basslines and shouty cockney vocals. Debut single "We Don't Care" was a menacing musical manifesto; a loud, laddish, bass-heavy mash-up of house, dub, hip-hop and bassline garage that seemed to stick two-fingers up at perceived musical boundaries. Clearly, these guys mean business. The duo's much-heralded debut long player expands this manifesto further, taking in elements of ska, punk and electro. It's pretty good, too, mixing genuinely abrasive floor-fillers-"Real Life", "The Snow" (a disco-punk-house mash-up of epic proportions)-with more contemplative numbers (such as the wistful "Veteran" or "100 Million"). Sometimes they come on like the Specials jamming with Basement Jaxx with The Streets' Mike Skinner on vocals, at other times like Magnificent Seven-era Clash with Rob "Stereo MC's" Birch on vocals; only dirtier. It's not a complete triumph-occasionally Franks' vocals can grate, and there's a certain "sameyness" towards the end-but it's certainly one of the most entertaining dance albums of 2003 so far. Here's hoping we hear more soon from these new heroes of "up-yours house". -Matt Anniss.

Underworld are in many ways the godfathers of techno, and A Hundred Days Off is close to a decade after their seminal debut album Dubnobasswithmyheadman firmly established their presence; they have little left to prove. Largely responsible for stretching the boundaries of dance, Underworld almost single-handedly dragged the genre out of murky clubs and into the live arena, blended guitars with techno and even had a mainstream hit "Born Slippy Nuxx" along the way. Following a three-year recording hiatus that saw longtime DJ collaborator Darren Emerson leave the fold, the remaining members Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have never sounded so buoyant. The tardy sequel to Beaucoup Fish, A Hundred Days Off has none of the former album's bristling claustrophobia and urban menace, favouring instead a joyous carnival feel riddled with cut-up live percussion and surging keyboard loops. Entrancing from the outset, the dreamy psychedelia of "Mo Move" sees Hyde languidly intone; "I dream that I'm chemical" while cascading percussion and the intensifying beat peak and dissolve. The storming 9-minute first single "Two Months Off" continues the surreal lyrical theme with Hyde this time chanting, "You bring light in", while mesmerising multi-layered rhythms and effects make for a sure-fire dancefloor dominator. There are quieter moments such as the breezy funk of "Solar Sytem" and lethargic folk-blues ambience of "Trim" (reminiscent of Moby circa Play), but while unmistakably Underworld throughout, A Hundred Days Off is their most unrelentingly upbeat and infectiously joyous release to date. -Christopher Barrett.

After the success of their 1996 debut Do You Like My Tight Sweater, this follow-up from Sheffield-based duo Moloko received rather a muted response-a shame, as it consolidated the principles they'd already established the first time round. That is, until the summer-1999 dance-remix release of "Sing it Back", which proved to be a huge hit, both in the Ibiza clubs and at home in the UK (unfortunately, that mix is not to be found on this CD). Existentially quirky and shiftless, it was another reproach to the increasingly homogenous mass of electro-pop out there, snagging on the cardigan of chart conformity. Mark Brydon's angular collage of samples, squelching Moog synthesisers, and lopsided rhythms tangled up perfectly with singer Roisin Murphy's schizoid vocals and spontaneous wordplay, particularly on the Pere Ubu-influenced "The Flipside. " However, Murphy's bizarre, robotic onstage antics and vocal mannerisms annoyed some, while others lazily marked Moloko down as a novelty trip-hop band. Consequently, I Am Not A Doctor never received the fair hearing it deserved. The last track reads almost like an appropriate epitaph: "Should've Been, Could've Been". -David Stubbs.

Unfairly dismissed by much of the electronica cognoscenti-too commercial, some sniffed: too calculated-this was, nevertheless, an ambitious (and mostly satisfying) attempt to fuse the volume and density of rock with the broad textural vocabulary of electronica. The single, "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Dub," effectively defined the template, marrying a corrosive Van Halen guitar sample to chattering breakbeats; the remainder of the album was divided between variations on this theme (the slide guitar propelling "Altamont Super-Highway Revisited," the bluesy shuffle of "Tears Of The Gods"), and moments of almost meditative stillness, courtesy of the group's other incarnation, the Stealth Sonic Orchestra. The most accomplished of the latter is a ballad titled "Pain In Any Language," which features the last recorded vocal of late Associates frontman Billy MacKenzie, to whose memory this bold and singular album is dedicated. -Andrew McGuire.

On a crystal clear English summer's evening in the summer of 2001, Norman Cook played his most celebrated DJ set Live On Brighton Beach. In front of an estimated 30,000 loved-up Brightonians dancing on the pebbles, the man known to millions as Fatboy Slim took to the decks for two hours of typically hedonistic party mayhem. It's these two hours-or, at least, an edited version of them-that make our Norm's first mix album in yonks and a perfect souvenir of the night now known as "Normstock". Sound wise, the album sees Mr Zoe Ball doing what he does best-mashing up thumping dancefloor favourites in a sweat-drenched party stylee. Those expecting classic big beat belters are in for a shock, though, 'cos these days the Fatboy is more into straight-up house and techno-albeit with the aforementioned party twist. So, we get some of 2001's biggest records-Basement Jaxx's "Where's Your Head At?", Raven Maze's "The Real Life", a couple from Santos-alongside a smatering of classics (Leftfield's "Phat Planet", an anthemic version of Underworld's "Born Slippy") and the off Fatboy number to keep the punters sweet. The result is a hot, sweaty, grimy mix that perfectly captures the sound and feel of Norman Cook's DJ sets, even if it does feel a touch out of date. -Matt Anniss.

It's been three years since Roni Size and his Reprazent crew created perhaps the greatest drum and bass album ever made, the Mercury Music Prize-winning New Forms. Since then there has been the sclerotic project Breakbeat Era and Krust's own Coded Language work, while drum and bass itself has become ever more hard and insular. It has also become more marginalised in the UK while its popularity overseas has inversely increased, embraced as a kind of electronic punk. All this is reflected in In The Mode-a harder, more international album. Method Man, The Roots' Rhazel and Rage Against The Machine's Zack de la Rocha are employed for a transatlantic celebrity shine and the mood is less groove, more grind. At times the energy and gravity-defying twists and turns of Size's production is stunning but only Rahzel appears to be comfortable with Reprazent's shape-shifting beats. The rest are on auto-pilot (though check Meth's Lady Di lyric) and the soulfulness of UK singer Onalee appears to have been put to one side, depriving In The Mode of her song-writing skills. There is little here that matches "Heroes", "Share The Fall" or "Watching Windows". Neither is there anything as instantly funky as "Brown Paper Bag" (though "System Check" echoes it). This doesn't make In The Mode a bad album. [+]

Oi Va Voi's strong live reputation gained them twin nominations in the 2002 BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards, and Laughter Through Tears marks the long-awaited album debut from this London-based sextet. The opening run of tracks are commercially viable and soulfully relaxed, with all Jewish traditional elements appearing as peripheral traces. On another level, this is a courageous (or perverse) move, saving the faster, more characterful numbers for the album's second half. This has a slow-building effect, but doesn't necessarily convey the band's full live personality. KT Tunstall provides emotive vocals on "Refugee" and "Yesterday's Mistakes", backed by soothing strings and nimble basslines, akin to Nitin Sawhney or Zero 7, given subtle traces of traditional klezmer. As Judith Ne'meth sings an atmospheric Hungarian love song, Oi Va Voi enter the more active second phase, all of its dancefloor elements hand-crafted by the live line-up of drums, bass, guitar, violin, trumpet and clarinet. Earl Zinger raggas up "Gypsy" and Uzbekistan's Sevara Nazarkhan trills on "7 Brothers", which is later remixed by Hefner, appearing as a hidden track. But it's "Dror Yikra" that provides the most extreme example of cross-culturalism, with Tunisian vocalist Ben Hassan tackling a traditional Sephardic tune from the Yemen, bolstered by flamenco touches and a pin-pricking jazz trumpet solo by Lemez Lovas. -Martin Longley.

The Rolls Royce of trance-house mixes, and every bit as cool as the polar bear on the sleeve, this first edition of Sasha and John Digweed's Northern Exposure sets is the tightest and most effortless of the series. With 11 superbly arranged cuts from the likes of William Orbit, Rabbit in the Moon, and the Future Sound of London, not one moment is wasted. The disc's flavor is decidedly organic and wholly evocative of all-night mountain raves or desert parties. Starting with the early-morning stretch of Keiichi Suzuki's delightfully sunny "Satellite Serenade," the duo swiftly build the tempo up to the breezy ambient plateau of Morgan King's "Free" before heading into harder house territories. The metronomic pulse and atmospheric chanteuse vocals of Fuzzy Logic's "Obsession" form an incremental crescendo with Orbit's "Water from a Vine Leaf. " Being a condensed version of the European release, the closing salvo from Banco de Gaia's "Last Train to Lhasa" confirms the since-validated fact that these Exposure journeys have infinite potential; Sasha and Digweed are among the first DJs to create mix sets that tap into earthy, human emotions. It is precisely this unique flavor that will make you yearn for a dance floor, beach, or campsite, packed with deliriously dancing bodies. Yes, really. -Steffan Chirazi.