Search - Various Artists :: The Best of House, Vol. 3: House + Progressive House

It is pretty good

HouseMusic | 01/02/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"It doesn't compare too well to Vol 1 & 2 although it did have some very good ones. Dark Beat, Fix My Sink and I've Set My Sights on you are my favorites and there are some other okay ones on here. Most of the songs were in the 3 to 4 minute range, and the song Shine was 13 min. but still good. Overall it isn't the best but the songs I liked I really did like."

The Best of What?

Mark Eremite | Seoul, South Korea | 12/23/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Most house music suffers from (or soars above) a disturbing amount of repetition. Every once in a while a DJ (e.g. Dave Seaman, John Digweed, Hernan Cattaneo) finds new genius in the formula (or, in some cases, sets the standard with a whole new batch of rules), but when you look at most mass-produced house (and this Best Of series is that, without a doubt), there's not much variety.



This installment attempts to buck that trend, with mild success. Their conceit? Taking the house out of the music.



Although house music started out as actual songs with verses, choruses, and bridges, it has since evolved to become a conglomeration of something more. It's rare, these days, to find a good house song that follows any kind of traditional paint-by-numbers song writing formula. These Best of House albums (for the most part) harken back to an era when people were still discovering what house music was capable of, and as such, you're bound to get some songs that sound like, well, like songs.



This album, of the four in this series, is perhaps the most watered-down when it comes to the actual terms of house one might expect (even from archaic chart-toppers like these). However, while the music on this disc is only barely what one might call house, it's still better than some of the actual house to be found on the previous two discs.



These songs are heavy on synth, short on sense, and long on predictability. Most of them sound like contemporary bubble gum pop on flourescent steroids. "Just the Way You Are" is a naughty, feel-good ditty that sounds like it's being sung by a sixteen year old girl. "Dove" has disco pretentions lying under its hip-hoppy happiness. And "Fix My Sink" seems woefully out of place, a pseudo-word jam with the flimsiest sexual innuendo ever to be put to music. All of the tracks are danceable, in their way, but very few of them ("Loneliness," "Sights On You," and "Scream") are anything close to what I would call "house," even by the loosest of definitions.



Don't get me wrong. None of these songs are necessarily bad. They're cute enough, and a few of them have the sparkles and seams of true house music. However, in the end, even if this album has its limited, sugar-coated appeal, it suffers from a pretty big flaw: mislabelling."