*** THE PERFECT BEATS, VOL. 1-4

(Tommy Boy)

Eighties disco gets a comprehensive overview on this 58-track collection from Tommy Boy, one of the premier disco labels of that decade. A few of the best songs revisited here (Shannon's "Let the Music Play" and "Give Me Tonight," Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock," and Yeaz's "Don't Go") were pop hits, but some of the most lovable were smaller club successes. Their almost illusory existence is what made them fascinating. Precious few moments in club kids' lives attached to C-Bank's "One More Shot," George Kranz's "Din Daa Daa," the Dominatrix's "The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight," or the Jonzun Crew's "Pack Jam," but the modesty of these songs' immanence mirrored the imbalance of their sounds -- usually a girlishness too cute for its own good or a boyish weird-out more nerdy than cool.

With a purist's completeness, these CDs also visit some of '80s disco's various '70s roots -- for example, the electronic beat of Kraftwerk's "TransEurope Ex-press"; the boogaloo of James Brown's "Give It Up, Turn It Loose," and Jimmy Castor Bunch's "It's Just Begun"; fusion jazz by way of the Blackbyrds' "Rock Creek Park"; and the sweet falsetto of Eddie Kendricks's "Date with Rain." It was all good-timy, intoxicating stuff in its era, ripe with hooks and an occasional sonic secret.

-- Michael Freedberg