This series of albums is the sound of one of the most epochally important producers in soul and dance music history reworking his magic. The closest analogy I can think of that non-dance music fans would appreciate is The Beatles' Love album in which George Martin went back to the master tapes and not so much remixed as recreated their work, but there is none of the whiff of superfluous tinkering here that that project had.
Tom Moulton was one of the men who invented the 12-inch remix – not simply extending a song, but remaking it from the ground up with entirely new production styles and overdubs to meet the demands of creative DJs and high-fidelity reproduction. In the process this marked the shift of 1970s disco from underground club scene to world-conquering movement, in turn influencing almost every kind of dance music thereafter, giving it a startling currency today.
Now in his sixties, Moulton has not changed his MO one bit. Taking original Philadelphia soul recordings by studio collectives like First Choice, Moment of Truth and Loose Change, he opens everything out, allowing air into the sound, letting every last detail – from the string sections to shakers and tambourines – sparkle in the space he creates for it. Everything is about finding the perfect détente between song and groove: each track here, though often over seven minutes long, retains the singalong feel of earlier, earthier, churchier soul music. The originals were in many ways mini radio dramas of love and loss; Moulton turns them into lavish epics. There's nothing here to suggest that these are new mixes rather than lost disco-era classics, and neither should there be – there has rarely been a better demonstration that when a formula ain't broke it doesn't need fixing. Utterly exquisite.
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