THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

On The Present Lover (Kinetic) Vladislav Delay is joined by vocalists Johanna Niemela, Watkinson and Antye Greie-Fuchs, to name a few, on his second album under the Luomo moniker. As stylish as it is rhythmic, Luomo's vogue is as vintage as it is visionary. The loping and shuffling beats of "Talk In Danger," with its exotically accented spoken parts hinting at intrigue and espionage, is dark alley disco at its most delectable. The title track is the sexy theme song for your best and most present lover, whose lovemaking skills caused you to boast to all of your friends and even a few strangers. "So You" asks the musical question, "Do I want too much?," but you'll be too busy dancing to answer. "Tessio" has that timeless disco feel that is easy to attempt, but hard to achieve, and the frustrations of "What Good" ("What good is it to talk to you?") can easily be resolved on the dance floor.

It is right here, with this remix CD, Daft Punk's Daft Club (Virgin) that the remixologists of the world have officially lost me. Discovery, the 2001 CD by the contemporary French dance music duo Daft Punk was, and still is, a terrific dance CD. Brimming with the filtered beats and studio wizardry of the daft pair, it was the kind of highly anticipated (four years in the making) follow-up disc that didn't disappoint. What is disappointing is that instead of providing their listeners with its third studio disc, Daft Punk has chosen, instead to release a disc of (big yawn) remixes. Can they already be tapped out of new ideas? How is that possible? As for the remixers, including The Neptunes ("Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"), Basement Jaxx ("Phoenix"), Slum Village ("Aerodynamic") and Boris Dlugosh ("Digital Love") to mention a few, I'd really rather hear something original from them, than the one-upmanship vibe I get from the remixer's quarters.