Deekline & Wizard: Live From Brixton to Brisbane

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  • Deekline & Wizard’s productions and remixes are a vital addition to any breaks DJ’s vinyl crate, with peak-timin’ tracks such as ‘All Your Love’ and ‘One In The Front’ guaranteed to bounce some booties. These tunes, along with scores more from D&W’s back catalogue, have been tossed into their first compilation ‘Live: From Brixton to Brisbane.’ So what happens when these two horndog jocks get their own chance on the wheels of steel? Things start off on an energetic, if rather staid tip with Napt’s ‘Get Back’, its macho beat canceled out by some l-a-m-e M-C-i-n-g (“It’s Skibadee, I’m a V.I.P. on this M-I-C, here with N-A-P-T” etc. etc. ad nauseam). Darftphunk’s ‘Right There’, however, is played as a perfect energy-upping track two until Plump DJs ‘Mad Cow’ really gets things frothing on track four. Topcat, the album’s master of ceremonies, does a solid job flowing over a trademark Plumps filthy bassline, but he falls flat in hosting duties otherwise, which are limited to a handful of thugged-out props to D&W made unintentionally funny due to his speech impediment. The mighty DJ Assault actually gets more mileage from his brief intro to ‘Make Your Girl Feel The Bass’: “You’re listening to Deekline & Wizard ‘Live: The Mix CD’, so see deez nutz, ya sluts! UHH!” A couple of tracks are diamond: DJ Icey’s ‘Taken Away’, which flips beachfront reggae for upfront breaks to devastating effect, and the guitar-shredding, bitch-slapping ‘Golddigga (Breakfastaz Remix)’ by Deekline & Wizard vs. Jack Beatz. Aside from ‘Golddigga’, however, most of the D&W tracks are already-rans from other, better comps. Their new shit is agreeable, but hardly impressive; there are only so many times you can sing along to the sole verse of ‘Woah’ – “You know how we roll, you know how we flow, woah, woah” – before feeling like a ‘tard. Elsewhere, tracks from Stanton Warriors (‘Get Em High’ and ‘Shake It Up’) along with D&W’s remix of ‘Dip & Get Low’ will have been played to death by any self-respecting breaks fan after appearing on “Stanton Sessions Vol. 2” and their “FabricLive 30” comp last year. So where’s the “freshness factor”, then? Woefully absent, apart from a shitload of scratching, most of which is used to mask bad segues between tracks. Deekline & Wizard would’ve been better off leaving last year’s bundle of originals and remixes alone instead of beating them to death here. A good template to follow could’ve been Plump DJs’ ‘Saturday Night Lotion’: hunker down and save up your new productions and remixes, then unleash it all in one expertly mixed comp, afterwards meting out a few EPs to starving fans and aspiring DJs. But instead of this strategy, or any strategy for that matter, “Live…” seems calculated to make a fistful of bucks off a few stale tracks. Don’t be one of those ignorant punters suckered in by the low riders and loose women on the album cover; there’s nothing to hear here.
  • Tracklist
      1 Napt – Get Back 2 Right There – DarftPhunk 3 Steam – Deekline & Wizard vs Fresh 4 Mad Cow – Plump Djs 5 All Your Love – Deekline & Wizard club mix 6 Goldigga – Breakfastaz Mix 7 Get em High – Stanton Warriors 8 Electric Disco – D Ramirez mix 9 Ghetto Blast Ya – Soto vs Deekline & Wizard VIP mix 10 Shake it Up – Stanton Warriors 11 Taken Away – Dj Icey 12 Make Your Girl Feel the Bass - Infiniti vs Deekline & Wizard mix 13 Wolf – Ctrl–z remix 14 Dip & Get Low - Deekline & Wizard mix 15 Bass Phenomenon – Krafty Kutz & Tim Deluxe 16 1 in the Front – Dj Deekline & Ed Solo 17 Special Dedication – Deekline & Wizard 18 Woah - Deekline & Wizard 19 The Chiche – Breakfastaz
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