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*** Carl Cox

MIXED LIVE

(Moonshine)

Cox, who looks like famed house DJ Frankie Knuckles but sure doesn't mix like him, here presents himself in real time and in the right setting: mixing live to a (presumably) full house at Chicago's Crobar Nightclub. Cox plays an entirely instrumental, minimalist style of dance music. Those who prefer the sweetness of a melody will find his music acerbic; those who like diva style will think him restrained. Still, there is classic disco-mix method in his droll madness. During the more than 60 minutes in which he highsteps, scratches, noise-effects, and buzzsaws his way through parts of 21 tunes, he keeps to the same rapid-fire groove, stringing every noise hook and beat burst to it like charms on a bracelet, exactly the way the first generation of disco DJs did it. Actually it's wrong to dub Cox's rhythm strings "charms on a bracelet." His harsh, nonvocal rhythms feel like barbed wire fencing us in, as if we were prisoners -- a stark, bitterly industrial picture of the world we run through, diva-less and not in any way sweet.

-- Michael Freedberg