JAMES HURR Vinyl & CDs

Review: Toolroom's 'sampler' series, which rounds up previously digital-only releases and sticks them out on action-packed 12" EPs, reaches its sixteenth instalment. Given the format, you'll be unsurprised to discover that there's plenty of bona-fide peak-time heat on show, starting with Mark Knight and James Hurr's excitable, filter-heavy, string-laden disco-house bomb 'You Take Me Higher'. Friend Within offers a scintillating blend of heavy acid bass, glassy-eyed female vocal samples, weighty beats and subtle disco samples on the superb 'Chain', while Martin Ikin and Winnie Ama opt for even heavier drums, warped bass, creepy electronics and dead-eyed spoken word vocals on the sweat-soaked 'Control It'. To round things off, we're treated to the tech-tinged funky house bounce of Flashmob and Raumakustik's percussion -rich 'Club Talk'.

Review: Here's a heavyweight suite of club cuts from the Toolroom Trax stable, featuring a whole squad of names linking up for some big room belters that should go down very nicely indeed with any medium-to-megasized party experience. Mark Knight's extended mix of 'Ready' is a proper epic, not least when the 'Insomnia'-esque stabs kick in. CASSIMM's 'Wanna Feel Something' is a heads-down sexy workout, while Superchumbo and Victoria Wilson James get remixed by Crusy for an equally brooding, high-end production. James Hurr and Arthur Baker round things off with chunky monkey 'Powder In The Nose', which teases a whole lot and then delivers even more on the drop.

Review: The latest V/A sampler record by Toolroom Records comes in the shadow of unfortunate news in regards to singer Kathy Brown, who, last we heard, was battling stage four cancer. Brown is the original featuring singer of Praxis' 'Turn Me Out'; her vocal contribution to the track has since gone sampled by many a deep and jackin' house producer, owing to its standout "work me with temptation" lyric, whose simple injunction and passionate delivery would seem to bottle the essence of an era (of overwork, of temptation, of desire). Now Toolroom continue to dedicate their latest releases to Brown in her honour; this time, her 'Turn Me Out' vocal is reworked into 'Turn Me Deeper', featuring a star cast of organ-synth peddling, deep house foundation-shattering producers (Wh0, Mark Knight, James Hurr), backed up by contributions by the likes of Shadow Child, Low Steppa and Maur as addenda.