V/A – Leave Them All Behind Volume 4 (Modular records)

It’s only recently that the kind of early 90’s influenced house music with wailing divas and piano solos has ceased to languish on the naff pile. Artists such as Teed, Grum and Azari and III have made a long derided genre of music cool once more. This is obviously something that Aussie label Modular records have kept a close eye on when compiling this fourth installation of ‘‘Leave Them All Behind’.

The previous editions worked so well because they mixed the hottest indie tracks from acts such as CSS, Gossip, Bloc Party with homegrown talent such as Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy into banging electro with no regard for genre barriers, this made for refreshing compilations. This fourth edition, the first for three years removes that randomness of hearing a rock track mixed into jacking house by splitting the genres, dance on CD1, indie and mainly rock and indie on 2 taking away the reason ‘Leave them all behind’ previously stood out.

Modular artist Bag Raiders mixes CD1 and uses a non-descript, no thrills approach that it is so smooth that it just plods along. Being capable at beat matching is only one aspect of mixing, when it’s the only one you concentrate on, the results are dull, this is what the Raiders do so even if the tracks were the most amazing cutting edge house cuts from Paris, the mixing is uninventive that the results are slightly boring.

Another problem here is that in no way is it representative of the healthy smash and grab nature of such an eclectic label, it’s a faceless compilation from a label which is anything but, how this has happened when you have Cut Copy, Ladyhawke, Canyons, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s and Robyn on your books is anyone’s guess.

The second unmixed CD has a much broader music selection; Canyons, Beni, Chilly Gonzalez, Matthew Dear and Toro Y Moi really stand out and should have been used on the mixed CD. Best thing to do here is forget the main CD, head straight for the unmixed one and do it yourself. 6/10
Chris Todd