DJ Sammy

It’s hard not to at least respect the Mallorca-based DJ Sammy. Starting off with a four-minute track that sounds like the love theme to a summer Hollywood blockbuster before getting to his up-tempo pop trance, it’s obvious that this is a touch more ambitious than your average bit of fluff. "Rise Again” from It’s All Gone Pete Tong, rips off the guitar riff from U2’s "Where The Streets Have No Name” and then crushes any hope of taste by pumping it full of the inevitable treble-charged trance synths. It’s not all terrible: "Long Way to Go” and "Little Girl’s Lullaby,” for example, are pretty well done; but then imagine if you were playing this album and "Why,” his miserable cover of the Annie Lennox song, came on just as a friend called. How would you explain that one? You might have to get a new circle of friends. Manchego is a good Spanish cheese. This is not.