San Francisco Sessions, Vol. 5

Album Review

It can be hard to make house music interesting, but that's just what globe-trotting DJs JT Donaldson and Lance Desardi manage to do on the fifth volume in the Om label's San Francisco Sessions series. In Desardi's case, his secret seems to be the minimization of saccharin string sounds and faux-jazz frippery in favor of varied sonic textures and dark, funky production effects. On his disc, tracks like Olivier Portal's "Minimal Logic" and the Morgan Geist remix of Reflection's "Cube Loop" rumble and bop with a slight but noticeable air of menace, which gives the music a welcome edge. Donaldson's selections are less sharp and more mystical, almost psychedelic at times, with occasional excursions into dubwise flavors (as on the Frantz Kromer remix of Miss Me's "Surprise Me" and Julien Jabre's "Same and Better"). The edge goes to Desardi, whose disc is the most consistently interesting of the two, but both are worth a listen and either one will serve duty nicely at your next party.