I’m always baffled by the Spanish diminuitive. Would laboratorio become laboratoriorito? Or would it just be laboratorito? Probably just pequeño laboratrio. Well, in any case, this krackin’ choon comes straight from the be-hind of Mr. Fatboy, Balearic-in-Ibiza-circa ’90 himself. Maybe now that xlr8r has declared that rave might possibly, to some people, in some way, be tentatively coming back, I don’t feel so cheesy busting out my “Renegade Master” remix or my “Brimfull of Asha.” Well, I never felt too guilty about that Cornershop joint. I vacillated between what I now realize is a far inferior Tom Middleton Remix, and this effortlessly on-point Ashley Beedle workout. Guaguanco is not only the name of this massive Latin stomper by Norman Cook’s brilliant but underemployed alter ego, it is also a subgenre of the Cuban rumba. Take a gander at the real mccoy.

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The Streets and I have a very ambivalent relationship. Sometimes I’m all about Mike Skinner’s sparsely-arranged tales of middleclass woe. Others I try surpress my Anglophilic tendencies, hating on the boring drama of being white and drugged up in the UK. When this Ashley Beedle Remix of “Weak Become Heroes” came out in 2002 I feverishly downloaded a shoddy radio rip. The bubbling house beat serves the lyrics properly and those piano stabs are enough to turn sour milk sweet again. I only wish that rave’s universal appeal had made it stateside. When Brits “rave” they fuckin’ party all night. When we rave we inhall vicks vaporub and dance with toys. WBH is a rave anthem.

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I can’t get over Alan Braxe. No matter how many remixes he turns out, save that pretty boring one with Fred Falke for Test Icicles, I just don’t get tired of French disco. The French have simply found better ways to use electro bass to provide the melodic lead in their dance tracks. Look no further than the Ed Banger mafia. That shit is perfectly pitched and synched bass range – and it locks people to the dancefloor. Runaway is Jamiroquai’s latest single off their greatest hits compilation, aptly titled “High Times.” The discofunk jam has some pretty fun lyrics about getting away from all the bullshit, and then Braxe and Falke lay on heavy filters and muffle the mids. Brilliant as always. Also, interesting to note that Jamiroquai came up with its name by adding the word Jam to Iroquois (as in the Indians) because like Jamiroquai circa “Emergency On Planet Earth,” the Iroquois are environmentally conscious.

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If you ask The Editors, the’ll tell you they’re the best thing since sliced bread across the pond. It was only a matter of time before their maddeningly Franz Ferdinandish bump and sway was going to hit stateside. On this Ghislain Poirier rub, the bon garçon from that other city on a well-planned, slim island, trades Munich’s glossy, post-shoegaze guitar for nearly abstract space-synths. It’s a le-bounce thing and I love it, but if it weren’t so expertly executed in the original, darker version, I doubt I’d be so into the bright, applause-heavy, GP mix.

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