Renaissance: The Master Series CD

This is a continuous in-the-mix CD compiled and mixed by Hernan Cattaneo.

With progressive house feeling the strain of way too many tunes and mixes with few new ideas, Hernan Cattaneo comes off as a fresh voice. No doubt it's the reason he's been selected to relaunch Renaissance's Master Series now coming out of its third year of hibernation. Cattaneo is a wonderful song selector and a tasteful mixer, rarely going for the obvious but unwilling to fracture his sets with anything outlandish. Here he starts with one disc of the slow and spacey, and follows it with one that drives a bit harder -- a device that's been used numerous times, but that's about it for being commonplace. Disc One's deep journey has more than its fair share of highlights. Tiger Corps' combination of saxophone and darts of Detroit keyboards is a winner, while Bill Makris fills his track with silky stutters and a melody that slowly worms into the brain. The second set starts off just fine with Chab's slick, Trans-European hand clapper (Kraftwerk's lawyers should really hear it) but layering T-Empo's gimmicky narrative "Fouk," over Josh Winks' fine-as-is "Oakish," gets tiresome about the third listen. It's Cattaneo's only slip on the whole set, which continues to coolly shuffle all the way up to Age of Love's classic closer. ~ David Jeffries