CD Reviews

Junior Vasquez

WHITE PARTY VOLUME 7 | Centaur

By MICHAEL FREEDBERG | March 14, 2006

3.0 Stars

THIS OLD HOUSE: Could it really have been 16 years since Vasquez turned house on its ear?

The cover features a white-haired, aged-looking Vasquez. Can it really be 16 years since he turned house fans on their ear with the salacious, Latin-beat rhythms of “X,” a jam dedicated to the uptown drag-ball queens known as House of Xtravaganza? Gone now is that Vasquez, and gone that music, with its screamy vocals and push-pinchy beats signifying hit-and-run sex in angel-dust corners of a hectic life. The Vasquez who put together these 10 tracks is a different man. His taste is happy gospel, soulful joy with an almost pop-music tone. He favors R&B vocals, no less, by mainstream performers like Amuka (“I Want More”), Cisy Houston (“Shake Yourself Loose”), Deborah Cox (“Stupid like U”), even Destiny’s Child (“Stand Up for Love”). He never dusts these voices with atmospherics, and neither does he hit-and-run them with harsh beats. Instead, he supports them with what he calls “instrumentation that’s tough as nails” — but nothing as prickly as those of his 1990s mixes, rhythms that evoked all kinds of edgy and even violent emotions. What he means now by “tough as nails” are drum ’n’ bass grooves, happy, joyous, generously expressed in keeping with the get-on-up, free-yourself, loosen, and go-for-love themes attested to by one gospel-tinged diva after another. There’s even, in Corrina Joseph’s “Funk,” a prayerful piano solo leading to a still more prayerful and — need I add? — funky rhythm.

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