Renaissance: Desire

Bringing the club floor yet closer to the living room sofa, this is another double-disc set bringing the Renaissance nights to your home. Your host for this set is trance-house Brit David Seaman, and with his deft sense of mood and tempo the driving force here, Desire starts off slowly yet has absorbed you wholly by the time Solid Sessions' high-energy, uptempo classic "Janiero" slides into your ears. Never obvious, never cheesy yet always populist enough to attract clubbing novices, Desire builds slowly to a cruise-control 90 miles per hour, Seaman more interested in weaving trance-house dreamscapes than showering the room with beats per minute. Some of 2000's classic names resurface ("Pete Heller Presents Sputnik," Way Out West's "Mindcircus"), but so too does Seaman's creative use of Placebo's "Passive Aggressive," Junkie XL's "B Y Whop Too Be Y," and Finlay Quaye's "Spiritualized." A fine set, and one that is rich and decadent in the finer elements of trance-house without ever being ostentatious or overbearing. Indeed, if the more sophisticated hedonistic Romans enjoyed a bit of electronica, this might well have been their mix. --Steffan Chirazi