CD: Santos - If You Have Meat You Want Fish

An awful lot of people involved in producing electronic dance music find a niche and stick to it. Many do this with a very po face. Speak to them about it and they may play you a track they think is "poppy" to demonstrate their range. It usually isn't, it's just a teensy-weensy bit less purely dance-floor functional than the rest of their oeuvre. Because all they ever listen to is techno, dubstep, fill-in-the-blank, their ability to make a comparative judgment has eroded.

In truth, this is also one of the great things about dance music, that zealot-like devotion to the conceptual core of a micro-genre, that fine-tuning and relentless honing - so fair game. On the other hand, cheeky blighters who dabble promiscuously hither and thither across dance-music styles with insouciant disregard for the stern mores of hardcore scenesters are also welcome, provided they have sonic wit and studio chops. Into this category we can place names such as Armand Van Helden, prime-time Fatboy Slim and Santos.

The latter is 40-year-old Italian DJ-producer Sante Pucello, who is best known for the one-off hit "Camels" in 2001. Since then he's released a range of clubby fare, much of it tinged with off-piste ideas and a groovy lack of seriousness. His third album is much less playful, sticking to a 4/4 house throb throughout. However, Santos is actually off exploring, as usual. Latin percussive ideas and the occasional jazz instrumentation (saxophones, trumpets) weave around the dominant hypno-throb, and electro-house tear-ups are punctuated with the shouty, radio-friendly "Get Strong" (think Groove Armada's "Superstylin'"). Where some of Santos's past fare has been as much about radio pop as Ibizan sweatboxes, If You Have Meat... is firmly grounded in clubland. It has the zesty obviousness of, say, Erick Morillo, but also maintains a sampledelic frivolity that is all its creator's own.

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