Crime In The City

Parisian trio Gregoire, DJ Vas and Jayhem are the latest French euro-dance imports to impact on our club culture, and it's not hard to see why.

Crime In The City is an intoxicating headrush of hip hop, house and funk that implores you to enjoy its every cadence, every dropped beat and every tingling musical workout.

Think Air, think Moby, think Daft Punk and you're getting slightly warm, but add in a sense of undeniable optimism and you have one seriously uplifting album. Kojak's debut is the perfect warm-up for a night on the tiles, the antithesis of Tom Waits' Closing Time, if you like.

It's also multi-dimensional, from the pure hip hop intro of 'Nasty Crew' through to the seriously funked up chill-out electronica of 'Keep Me On Fire'. Then there's the adrenaline rush of 'Everybody Wants A Toy', which fuses into the laidback trippy beats of 'My Futomaki' or the up-for-it disco sensibility of 'Funkthead'.

'You Can't Stop It' is a house-influenced odyssey which resonates with a vibrancy and fluidity all of its own, even down to the snatches of jazz piano and the hint of stranger instruments lurking in the background.

'Stupid Jack' sees the Kojak team on a ragga trip, the title track is so chilled it could be just back from a sojourn in Greenland, while the scratchy hip hop beats and oh-so-smooth vocals ensure that 'Soulful' lives up to its title and then some.

The great thing about this album is that it works whether you're in the club, the car or the kitchen. Crime In The City has its feet in the disco era of the '70s, its body in the '90s and its head nodding firmly towards the new millennium. On the strength of this, Kojak could be pointing the way for many years to come.