Various

At the risk of exposing my fogey status, I must confess I owned the seven-inch single for "Pop Muzik" in the early '80s. As an artefact of the mutating and eventually perishing disco age it stood out thanks to its cool European weirdness, brain-dead simplicity and catchiness. These were all elements that house and trance would eventually turn into one long, E-fuelled dance party. These post-house remixes get off to a dubious start with both Paralyzer and Devo (!?) doing little more than shuffling the beat pattern and maintaining most of the original elements. A few more echoing handclaps and it may as well be 1982. Even the Dub Spencer/Trance Hill dub version is just smoked-out analogue. A few bright spots appear, with Karl Moestl's inverted dub treatment adding space and vigour to the track, and Stachy's mix nailing an odd retro/future balance. The first ten minutes of the compilation touched my nostalgia nerve but by the 20-minute mark, all my nerves were touched, unfortunately.