Danny Tenaglia

ATHENS

(Global Underground)

Once again, as in his double-CD set London Midnight, DJ Danny Tenaglia creates two full-length sets of slickly dark, deep-beat house music that seems to lift the dancer up off ground level. Nobody, not even Junior Vasquez or Little Louie Vega, has Tenaglia's headstrong flair for deep beats, his willingness to flaunt them in every kind of context (voice, trumpet, echo effects, you name it) and to exaggerate their textures as irrationally as he likes. Such is his pleasure principle, and his Athens set -- "re-creating the sound of his live DJ set in Athens, Greece," explain the liner notes -- shows just how pleasingly individualistic his taste can make an hour or more of intoxicated divas and rhythm feel. He chooses the most off-base tracks you'll ever hear for his mix (with echoes of the oddball taste of the late, great Arthur Russell: try Miss Kitten's "Frank Sinatra," on the first CD, or Tilt's "Seduction of Orpheus" on the second), voices so weird and wanton you don't know whether to laugh with them or at them as they sneeze, twitter, and talk trash. But the weirder the track, the plusher and more repetitive the beat Tenaglia puts underneath it, until you find yourself accentuating the predictable. And comprehending the absurd, and liking it. House music gets no better than this.

-- Michael Freedberg