Remedy XL

Dance music far too often falls into one of two extreme camps - either anal-retentive 'underground values, maaan' or else cheesy, commercial Ibiza-anthems hell. Basement Jaxx's ambition, on the other hand, is not just to revitalise the state of house music, but to be a 'remedy' for the ills of this world, to spread cheer and goodwill via their tunes. A well-meaning, big-hearted mission, but this isn't any Sgt. Pepper for 1999 as the foaming-at-the-mouth, pre-release style magazine hype suggests. What can't be denied however is that Remedy rocks.

Things take a while to take off as the opening two cuts 'Rendez-Vu' and 'Yo-Yo' are a little too layered, overproduced and mechanical for all the talk of 'house music with soul'. 'Jump 'n' Shout' is the first real floor-filler, which in these 'invent a new term' times I would christen as 'step-up ragga'. From there it gets progressively better. 'U Can't Stop Me', drips with soul and it's followed by the already familiar chart smash 'Red Alert', a track which is almost certainly pumping out of a club PA somewhere in the world, even as you read this. The album version unwisely trims it down to four and half minutes, losing the build-up to that bass line which has 'Summer 1999 - Nice One' written all over it.

'Same Old Show' pulls off one of house's omnipresent clichés, the repeated orgasmic groan, with a style showing that sometimes in the quest to be original, it's no harm to deconstruct the existing formulae. The most haunting moments on Remedy come towards the close in the shape of the spooky instrumental 'Stop 4 Love', and the breathtaking, claustrophobic freak-out of 'Don't Give Up'.

Remedy is certainly close to being a great record, but it's still a little too polished to be the classic prematurely touted as 'album of the year' in the UK press. That said, something special has indeed crawled out of Camberwell, and it sounds very good when served with one of its delicious carrots.