CD Reviews

Victor Calderone

Evolve | Ultra

By MICHAEL FREEDBERG | September 24, 2007

3.5 Stars

Victor Calderone ranks among the top house DJs, and his newest mix makes it clear how he got there. His style is what fans call “New York house music”: it’s similar to the slinky, soulful, beat-driven format called “tribal” but harder, edgier. Calderone’s tracks have a steely texture that feels a lot like European funk, with its memories of late-’80s industrial. More purely New York is the darkness of his sonic effects and vocals — which include “Konkrete Jungle, Pt. 2,” a track by Cevin Fisher & DJ Kelee that echoes Fisher’s seminal “The Way We Used To Be.” Calderone & Vibe’s “Da Muzik,” Big Black Boot’s “Vibrate,” Alex Dolby & Maskio’s “Jack Is Black,” and Wilson Santos’s “One Step Beyond” push the hard beat mercilessly, in the punishing manner of a five-hour live set. The assault lets up on Gabriel Ananda’s “doppelwhipper,” but its fusion-jazz whimsicality soon gets chewed up by Peter Bailey & Richie Santana’s “Mind Control” and then Calderone’s own “End of Rotation” and a second Calderone & Vibe track, “Transient” — in all of which Calderone intersperses his ferocious improvisations with a dark factory funk.

Topics: CD Reviews , Victor Calderone, Victor Calderone, Peter Bailey, More

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ARTICLES BY MICHAEL FREEDBERG

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SANDER KLEINENBERG | January 22, 2008
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