Micro Mega

Strip Steve is a French producer who has learned the lessons of Daft Punk very well. His sliced-and-diced take on house music owes much to the style of his fellow countrymen, and the sound of his debut album, Micro Mega, will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has a fancy for French filter house and the Punk. If it were just a mere ripoff or nostalgic endeavor, though, Micro Mega would be easy to dismiss and Strip Steve would be just another jacker. Luckily for anyone savvy enough to pick up the album, there's much more to it than that. Strip Steve takes the basics of the French house sound and plays around with it gleefully, smashing disco balls into glittery shards on song fragments like "Micro" and "Skate Control," getting seriously phat and funky on "Money Trouble Funk," embracing the sound and cranking out a perfect replica or two ("Radiocheck" and "All the Time"), and even dialing it down to burbling, warped late-night jam speed on "Don't Know When." These tracks all show Steve is a master of taking old styles and sounds and making something exciting out of them. He also shows off some serious skills as a collaborator. His track with California pop dreamers Puro Instinct ("Astral Projection") is a lovely, nocturnal disco ballad that's not too far from what you might hear on an Italians Do It Better release; "One Thing" with Chicago house legend Robert Owens is a melancholy house track with Owens' yearning vocals front and center. Micro Mega is a strong debut from a producer who has a firm grasp of the past, sounds great in the present, and is well positioned to do interesting things in the future.