**1/2 Victor Calderone

E=VC2

(Tommy Boy)

Victor Calderone, a soulful and sexy house-music DJ who first gained attention as a remixer of Madonna singles, here creates his first CD-length DJ session. Unfortunately for those who expect a club DJ to state his case through the acrobatics of actual mixing, Calderone leaves aside the entire world of mixing surprise, preferring here to arrange his music rather than improvise on it. Still, he does deeply know house's taste. Thus the joyous onrush of house's ecstatic side flows and flashes in Veronica's "Someone To Hold," the Hyperdelics' tribal "Are You Ready," and Madonna's "Sky Dits Heaven" (Calderone's own mix, of course) and especially in Kim English's "Unspeakable Joy" -- tracks that sound a lot like DJ David Morales's mix style.

Calderone also takes a long, Danny Tenaglia-like look at house's sultry hard side with Andrea Martin's "Share the Love," Dan Q's "Aural Tribe," and the "dub" version of the 1987 classic "Do It Properly," a collaboration between himself and master house DJ Peter Rauhofer. Still, it's disappointing to find a DJ with as rich and massive a sound as Calderone has exhibited in his 12-inch singles devoting his first full-length DJ session to sounding more like Morales, Rauhofer, and Tenaglia than like himself.

-- Michael Freedberg