- James Connolly likes to keep us on our toes. As L-Vis 1990 he can lay claim to probably the most varied (in both style and quality) discography of the Night Slugs roster. And he continues to explore divergent interests—while the hybrid forms of last year's Ballads EP took cues from Bok Bok or Jam City, Connolly has in parallel been developing a taste for straighter hardware workouts. First there was 2012's Club Constructions Vol. 1, a collection of diamond-hard retro-futurist machine jams that drew on ghetto house, '80s jack tracks and pummeling loop techno. Then came Circuits, its follow up for Clone's Jack For Daze, which covered similar ground but in a manner that felt less vital, and perhaps a little more like retro-pastiche.
L-Vis 1990 Presents Dance System follows the same vector, but this time Connolly is working under a new alias, Dance System. "No More" deploys a little of the raunchy bump of Cajmere's "Percolator"; the offbeat two-note synth riff in "DS Theme" is lifted straight from '80s Chicago house. Both are polished and entirely functional but lacking in spark. "Flash Drive," with its tinny sampled chords, looks set to go the same way, but its ostentatious tempo wind-down improves the shock quotient somewhat. And "Move It" tips a more direct nod to Connolly's influences by drawing on the vocal talents of Dance Mania stalwart Jammin' Gerald. Between its scratchy rubber band riff and Gerald's sampled exhortations, this one has more going for it, even if it's still essentially treading water in a decades-old pool.
TracklistA1 No More
A2 DS Theme
B1 Move It feat. Jammin Gerald
B2 Flash Drive