Popular Black music in the UK can be so much more expansive than the stuff produced in the US. Even with pop artists returning to Disco and House templates, we end up with a lot of uninteresting radio filler that can’t past muster on the dance floor. MJ Cole has been one of my favorite UK Garage artists for over ten years. Transcending the rhythm-scapes of late Disco, House, R&B and Dancehall in his production, he always works with innovative and unheralded vocalists (with the odd exception of a Jill Scott) and his singles never fail to bust up my preconceptions about what Black music can be. “Watertight,” featuring the amazing Laura Vane of The Vipertones on vocals, was originally released on some compilations from Hed Kandi and such in the summer of 2005, but the NAPT version wasn’t released until Prolific dropped a remix maxi of the single in 2006. NAPT seem to be pretty big in the UK Breaks scene, but this is the first that I’m hearing them. They have a really fresh take; its as if they know all the rules for creating a 4×4 monster, and they’re bending and skillfully breaking them around the edges, daring you to stop dancing.

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Ms. Dynamite blew up back in 2001 with the club track “Booo!” The hit was produced by the UK Garage artist Sticky and released on Pete Tong’s FFRR label. The following year Dynamite released a debut album that sadly veered far away from the hard-edged, Ragga-tinged sound that helped her become one of Britain’s biggest club artists. Almost 10 years later, it seems that Dynamite is back where she was meant to be: spitting gritty, patois-inflected chants and rhymes over dark Garage beats. DJ Zinc’s “138 Trek” is probably the song he’s best known for, but that might change with the imminent release of his and Dynamite’s rumbling tumbling “Wile Out.” With a bouncy 130BPM house tinge, the track fits perfectly into almost any sort of set you can imagine, from those sprightly, poppy ones spun by Annie Mac, to Zinc’s own deeper, darker fare.

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That Jazzanova, a German sextet featuring three production gurus and three DJs, finds its lowest common denominator in Hip Hop comes as no surprise. Their production style is clearly rooted in a love for crate digging, even when they record live instrumentalists and push their soulful sounds past the limits of the sampler. “I Can See,” featuring the breezy vocals of Bristol-native Ben Westbeech, is the lead single and easily the standout track from Jazzanova’s 2009 album, Of All The Things. It didn’t take much for Brooklyn’s Nu Disco pioneers Holy Ghost to turn the already bumping album track into a guaranteed floor filler. All they had to do was lose the syncopation, add reverb to the handclaps, loop the funk out of the bass, add some synth and stir. It’s probably that goddamn tambourine that makes it all work though.

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