Disco Kandi 3
Compiled by Mark Doyle
(Hed Kandi Records)
Disco Kandi is, like candy itself, sugary sweet and slightly cloying. Suck on it for a while and it's great, pig out and it'll have you reaching for a sick bag. The latest double-album from Hed Kandi has been given the same full-on promo treatment by HMV as other releases from the label, such as the Winter Chill and Nu Cool series. Each has the trademark animated eye-candy cover - cool chick in cool clobber (this one's a roller-skater). All very nice, but it's what it does for the ear and the feet that matters.
Hed Kandi aims at the long-in-the-tooth, but not-yet-jaded clubber. 'Life doesn't end at 25' is the company's admirable philosophy, best shown in its excellent Back To Love compilation, an excellent album charting the genesis of house music. This is a different bag altogether. Described as 'a glittering selection of the sexiest disco house and uplifting US garage', Disco Kandi pumps with enough energy to keep a disco dolly dancing round her handbag all night.
Among the freshest are Sugartown by Hakan Presents Worldly Pleasures and First Choice's The Player, while a couple of classics are culled for old time's sake - Sonz Of Soul's Race Of Survival and Sweetest Day Of May by the Joe T Vanelli Project. But several tracks are so saccharine they rapidly induce nausea.