Bloom

Although this is the duo's debut album, Josh Gabriel and Dave Dresden have been influential figures on the club music scene for some time, remixing tracks by the likes of Annie Lennox ("Pavement Cracks"), Sarah McLachlan ("Fallen"), and even Britney Spears ("Me Against the Music"). For Bloom, Gabriel & Dresden pulled together a handful of tracks by artists they're especially enthusiastic about (including McLachlan, Guy Gerber, Audioholics, and Above & Beyond) and packed them in among original material from their back catalog and a few new compositions written just for this album. The result is an impressive two-disc set of stylistically varied club music on which the occasional disappointments (Gerber's awful "Stoppage Time," Lili Haydn's barely tolerable "Anything") are nicely outweighed by such moments of brilliance as Andain's gorgeous cover of the Depeche Mode chestnut "Here Is the House" and a truly spectacular remix of Dido's "Don't Leave Home." Sarah McLachlan's contribution is a lovely little song called "World On Fire," presented here in a Junkie XL club mix that would have been killer if he had just kicked up the funk factor a little bit. The "dub" versions could have been a bit dubbier, and it would have been nice to hear a few more breakbeats in among the thumpy house tracks, but this is really a very impressive debut. Recommended.